I am considering believing
in hell again to have somewhere
to send you
damn you who
kills with God burning in your eyes
and on your tongue
when God is nothing if He is not
too good for you to speak
or hear
or to frame your fearful
sense of proportion
or, pity me now,
to have imagined Satan,
the work I see
of human minds
and hands
like yours
bloody
and crooked. Yes,
you have cast yourself
as the unclean spirit
God's antonym
and it is up to us to make
your life on earth
hell.

A native New Yorker, James Penha has lived for the past quarter-century in Indonesia. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and in poetry. Snakes and Angels, a collection of his adaptations of classic Indonesian folk tales, won the 2009 Cervena Barva Press fiction chapbook contest; No Bones to Carry, a volume of his poetry, earned the 2007 New Sins Press Editors' Choice Award. Penha edits The New Verse News, an online journal of current-events poetry.