The Poetry Marathon

Upside down in metal origami

spiderwebbed windshield

roof smashed to almost top of head level

seatbelt preventing neck fracture

as far as I know

daring to squirm

risking the hangman

it was all going so well

I don’t even remember how it happened

there was a brief moment

where I felt like I was floating.

God loves gas stations

there’s one on every corner here

a discarded chick tract looks up from

a shiny, rainbow pool of oil

mad at the world still.

Sign says to turn the car off during fueling

sherriff on the sticker points to remind

but as hot as it is

we’re leaving ours on and risking it.

It started with solar panel smashings

fields littered with black spaceware

twinkling in shards in the sun

next, they took down the turbines

felling them during maintenance

two workers were seen on top

embracing before jumping together

from there, it was the hydroelectric dam

hole blown in wall by homemade device

thousands of gallons crash through

drowning what must have been thought of

wrongly as an acceptable cost

soon the smog returned

and every anti-green hick

worshipped at the rigs and

returned to the mines

dying, choking, but feeling free somehow

pulling us with them into an Earth on fire.

Scorpion pose, on the neck

Feet thrown forward behind the head

sculpted perfectly

comet being

tighten trucks next time

Blue barrel

filled to the brim

in which we will place memories

still in tact but cut down

and wait until they’re an unrecognizable soup

Place an order for staples

put it on the steering wheel

flaps in the blowing A/C

adjacent lane, car comes to sudden stop

thud and crunch

head is whipped forward

post-it note unmoved.

Kaleidoscope glasses

arm flapping and

shouting random words

at nothing

customers gawked at you

but they still signed up for memberships

even looking into the fractals on your face.

We were on your father’s boat

the dog went overboard

your mother was convinced

that there were bull sharks in the water

the propeller skipped off of the sand

and your dad dragged the dog out by its collar.

Sweltering, collapsing

mind ran ragged

fumbling forward to the manhole

endurance athlete

made by necessity

clearing the hurdles

by falling over them.

Genetic code, that’s all it is

endlessly mutable and

becoming antibiotic resistant

tiny things, squirming with cilia

and seeking new homes to fester in

where they might rest for a while

and learn how to do something much worse.