Going Strong
At eighty-one and seventy-eight, Mom and Dad
are still going strong. Halfway between twelve and thirteen,
Chance, our Beagle, is still going strong. Civilization,
at roughly seven-thousand years old, is still going strong.
In my dreams an asteroid is due to collide with America;
I announce, like a bored clerk at the DMV, that it’s four-thirty
and the sun is still going strong. Morning hits me like a slap in the face.
On the TV, a reporter predicts nationwide winter storms, snow and ice
and rain making travel treacherous. Stranded or delayed, our plans
are unchanged, for despite the carnage, the rubble, and the brutal cold,
life on Earth is going strong.
It Happened Here
In countless town squares, certain statues whose
antebellum lips have long been pursed in stone,
begin to smirk; still others, squirreled away in shame
to some macabre museum or mansion, seem to glow
in anticipation of the crane that will restore them
to their glory. Language too is being restored: disfavored
words, excised from public use, are forced into hiding;
mountains and bodies of water are renamed,
as though recently widowed; the gap between what
is said and what is meant is widened, until grammar
itself becomes incoherent; the sacred is made to be
profane and the profane is given sanction.
I observe a corpulent crow devour an Eagle, then
carry off its talons like a trophy. Covered in blood,
it lands in my yard and, briefly sated, preens its feathers
like a tyrant ironing his suit after a rape and pillage.
In my terror, I seem to hear him singing anthems,
making oaths, while all around his murder awaits
instruction. And throughout the land, the people,
knowing what they know about birds of prey,
having erected scarecrows and noise guns and
glimmering fences, stare in awe at the mutilated
livestock, the crops picked clean, as though
such violence couldn’t possibly visit them here.
Andy Posner
Andy Posner grew up in Los Angeles and earned an MA in Environmental Studies at Brown. While there, he founded Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit that provides financial services to low-income families. When not working, he enjoys reading, writing, watching documentaries, and ranting about the state of the world. His poetry has been published in several journals, including Burningword Literary Journal (which nominated his poem ‘The Machinery of the State’ for the Pushcart Poetry Prize), Noble/Gas Quarterly, and The Esthetic Apostle.
