The God and the Goat by Rowan Ricardo Phillips

The God and the Goat

And then the goat said to the God, 

Deliver me my skin. And He 

Did. Then the goat said to the God, 

Anoint me in my skin again. 

—And He did. Then the goat said 

To the God, Seal me in my skin. 

And He did—. He salved the seams. 

And subtled him. And Himself, too. 

Call it unrecognizable 

Weather: boiling snow sidling 

Gilt cloudbanks; a beetle-back sky; 

Nacre-gnarled écorchés of ought 

And nought air; all caught in the thought 

That we were the God and the goat, 

Once strangers, now just strange, and bound 

By the songs of Heaven and wound 

That wing out from our one shared throat.