Buccal Fat of the Gods - Caleb Bethea

They cut it out of you and ship it to a farm where the field’s already plowed, planting it under the soil so they can see what sprouts by morning, but it’s always the same thing–a twisted human body, strewn out like a marbled Greek tragedy that really said fuck you to the gods–which is why this farm slouches so far from Mount Olympus, almost nothing surviving at this distance from the Mediterranean sun, most of the crops growing from the buccal fat you just learned was in the bathroom mirror, ready for the scalpel, just like the dicks on all those statues the church got a hold of all those years ago, planting stone genitals in the soil, surprised when this very farm birthed out from the ground, soft and fatty at sunrise–the same sunrise we’re watching now with our faces gaunt, saint-like, god-like, a mirror of the time before the blade, only a little curious about the bodies sprouting at our feet.

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Caleb Bethea is a writer from the Southeast. He's an MFA at the University of South Carolina and works as a copywriter. The best of his time - by far - is spent with his wife and two goblins by the ocean. Catch his work in Maudlin House, HAD, Bear Creek, Twin Pies, hex, Autofocus, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter at @caleb_bethea_