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Raymond Berthelot

Raymond Berthelot is a writer, poet, and author of the chapbooks, The Middle Ages and Border Crossings. His poems have appeared in Rowayat, The Acentos Review, Chaotic Merge, The Caribbean Writer, Progenitor, Mantis, Peregrine Journal, Apricity Magazine, and many other diverse literary journals.

Small Gods 

I stare into the deep black eyes 
	of my dog, intense, and the eyes of a small god stare back.

The house creaks and settles in the morning.
	We have this in common.

We carry our ancestry within us wherever we go,
	and there is not a damned thing to do about it.

Is it better to pray for healing, or for courage and wisdom 
to face the facts that we need healing.

You get what you get, nothing more to be said about it.
	Unless you want to say more, I’m listening.

At 3 AM the moonlight catches the small brown and black figurine of a rabbit, molded and baked by Lenca Indian hands in the manner of their Central American ancestors for a thousand years or more.  I lie on my sofa and stare into the eyes of this other small god, the rabbit alive, swirls in the design breathing in the moonlight.  She whispers “patience.”  Sleep sneaks in, hidden by the shadows.