Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig graveyardofthegods.org. NS
Answer
graveyardofthegods.org. 5 NS ns-656.awsdns-18.net.
graveyardofthegods.org. 5 NS ns-1036.awsdns-01.org.
graveyardofthegods.org. 5 NS ns-284.awsdns-35.com.
graveyardofthegods.org. 5 NS ns-353.awsdns-44.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0