David Wojahn

The Inca lets Pizarro stroke his tunic. A crude adventurer in armor, touching
    the Offspring Of The Sun Itself.
I said to him, Inca, of what is a robe as soft as this mayde? He explained
    it was frome the skins of vampyre bats
that flye at night in Puerto Viejo & Tumbez & which feede upon the natives.
     Sacred was the Inca's spittle:

women of noble families were employed to catch it in a cloth, lest the ground
    should not defile it. Later,
the Sun God is garroted, a Dominican priest thrusting a crucifix into his hand
    before the noose is tightened. Later,
an Andean mountainside is honeycombed with nitro to blow up & extract its gold.
    Later, an oil rig catches fire      

in the Gulf  outside Biloxi, killing eleven. Later, Phil Spector points a very large 
    pistol at Dee Dee Ramone & his guitar.
He is producing the album The End of the Century & seeks for eight hours
    to extract the opening chord
of "Rock and Roll High School." From the mummified head of a rival,
    the Inca commanded

a drinking goblet to be fashioned, the refreshment emerging from
    a spigot in the mouth.
In "Be My Baby," Spector's storied Wall of Sound is comprised of sleigh-bell,
    castanet, full orchestra & the Ronettes  
in beehive hairdos, who are less four mixed-race girls from East LA
    than noblewomen chosen

to retrieve the Sun God's spit. Take 135. To accessorize his tailored suits, Spector  
    kept a cache of pistols in the way
that other men keep ties. Bling & Rolex, a ruby-studded coke spoon
    swaying his pallid throat.
& in the suburbs this morning a trio of my neighbors armed with handguns
    stalk a rabid raccoon,

zigzagging dogwood & azaleas, the neighborhood children in tow, maintaining
    respectful distance. From a hedge
the creature darts out; the briefcase man my neighbor aims his pistol.
    A froth of blood, a second shot
against the head. Four states south there are plans to ignite five hundred miles
    of oil-bespattered water

Even the Inca's table scraps were holy relics & warehoused in camphorwood
    trunks. My neighbor pokes the bloated stomach
with a stick. I am coming to believe the Gnostics were right; insatiable &
    shameless is the Demiurge,
though ably do we serve Him. The cocked .44 increases not His grandeur,
    though a temple-psalm results in the form

of a minor song within the corpus of four pretend-brothers in leather jackets.
    Once more we sift the mountain's rubble,
extract the nuggets, golden fillings, the rooms overflowing with valises, shoes &
    hair. The face on the goblet will be hewn into a smile.
O Fearsome One, look upon us as we linger by the flowerbeds, making small talk
    as the joggers & the mothers
   
pushing strollers file by. On cable we will view the oil rising miles to a sky
    turned blue-black in the fashion of a bruise.
Factotums all, we rise at dawn to creep into the cave where our quarries slumber.  
    Razor-fanged, blind. The huge ears
tremble at our step, a dainty dish to set before the Firstborn Of The Sun.
    We club, we net, we shake them lifeless

in our woolen sacks, careful to leave the pelts undamaged.