A TEXTBOOK APOCALYPSE
The way the mountain snow-shoulders its bulk
________________________________into the rearview mirror.
Spider season: sun-struck window laced
________________________________with cracks, fine-spun.
Our dreams: the bright & the black
________________________________waters, a vision
of the bull. These sheep
________________________________cannot be counted. Endless
categories of angels: trumpeter, strumpet,
________________________________dilettante & purveyor
of chaos. The mechanic
________________________________forgets a rubber seal.
How the oil sprays! All for lack
________________________________of a gasket.
We forget daily & daily, & daily
________________________________a scatter of starlings
across the blanched sky. Pepper or buckshot.
________________________________We fast. The sun
leeches our hunger. Our hunger
________________________________was in fact the first sign.
*
THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER
Our poverty-year, year-of-ash,
the year the frost outlasted
us. Consider our ruptures,
our harvest-ice, ice-dam under
the glacier’s tongue. How snow
bloodied the sky! We cannot unknow
the story we told: cold cadaver,
un-/re-made. Our beloved monster,
our wet, ungenial nature. Lurid
chemicals & powders, the florid
stage of our disease. Scavenged
& raptored, our livers & lungs
on the laboratory floor. Year
we were bit-at. The year we were born.
