A Magazine of Many Arts

Mary Soon Lee

God's a gambler, a gamer,
rolling her quantum dice,

drawn to drama, the odds,
dueling with the devil.

Bet the dinosaurs. Lost.
Promised herself she'd quit.

Whereupon her plans progressed
with perfect predictability.

Millennia upon millennia
of interminable tedium

until she fell to temptation
down in hell's red halls.

Wagered mermaids, mammoths,
Camelot, Atlantis, Babylon.

And she's down there still,
offering chips to chance,

Lincoln and Gandhi long gone,
in need of higher stakes,

weighing what to risk:
war? plague? apocalypse?