Toast to the Aftermath
Our angels have traded their binoculars for krugerrands.
They send their regrets along with brochures from islands where the dollar
still buys luck.
Our keepsakes packed in knapsacks, we recite conspiracy theories by heart,
migrating under the cover of trees.
Collect warnings like family recipes and hide them in the grass.
Dilute panic with apathy. Shake. Then serve the mix on ice.
Before global mayhem, a morass of days must be endured.
Work: winding the time around your hands like an endless yarn.
Try to stay alert.
The last ships departing will look like toys through the haze.
These signs will prepare you for cataclysms
for which you cannot prepare.
Another round, please, for the uncertainties that now nag no more
than a foaming fizz stings the tongue.
Watchers
Years ago
they cut down
the dead oak
I had watched from my window
to build a house
over there.
So full of crows then,
their dark complacency
from rotting branches,
their blue-black
staring, endless, at me,
the oak’s branch tips
extending upward like fingers
of a child reaching
for comfort or answers,
the oily crows
waiting for something
from me.
Years,
and still they watch
from a void over there,
dead oak gone,
a blank sky with its ghostly
imprint smeared
blue and gray,
a child reaching her hand upward
waiting for permission to tell
her awful secret.
Georgia Kreiger lives in Western Maryland, where she teaches literature and creative writing. Her poems have appeared in Earth’s Daughters The 2River View, poemmemoirstory, The Orange Room Review, Literal Latté, Poet Lore, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Outerbridge, Backbone Mountain Review and others.
