Before robot fingers installed tiny screws and springs
Men silently loaded the empty cassettes
Into the feeder magazines and then swept up scraps
Of videotape that fell out like excrement

Meanwhile women wearing white gloves
Chatted at a cloth-covered table
And inspected the products like polished lacquer
Before placing them on the boxing line

And one woman recounted to another a miracle
That occurred recently or long ago
She couldn’t remember which
That she knew had decided her destiny

For her husband had defeated The Adversary
By taking his wife downtown with him
To the Greyhound station
To purchase the Satanic Bible

And when they brought the book home
He placed it atop the television set
During a broadcast of the Miracle Gospel Hour
Which played day and night on channel 68

And the Reverend Bobby Stevens
Of Sugarland Texas was explaining
That the faithful could acquire a marvelous cloth
That had been prayed over by Pastor Stevens himself

And thus exposed to the sacred word
The fiendish book began to howl with the pain
Of six thousand years of infernal torment
And to bellow words of unsurpassable obscenity

And Bobby with the utmost calm
For the husband’s name was Bobby too
Placed a Testament upon the squalling beast
Thereby silencing it forever

And then she knew that her husband’s gift
Had earned him the right to his own congregation
And if she prayed hard enough
Someday his own worldwide television ministry