Poetry |

“I Do Not Always Feel Sad When I Think About Humankind’s Eventual Mass Extinction”

I Do Not Always Feel Sad When I Think About Humankind’s Eventual Mass Extinction

 

 

Today in the park, roses

            dormant, the foliage all

undressed for the wretched

            months to come, my daughter

waving from her stroller

            at squirrels, I heard the hawks

circling, and there it was

            by a trash can: two toilets

torn from a house flip, dropped

            by some sketchy builder here

instead of a dumpster

            with proper permits, chipped

and rust-stained, the wreckage

            of somebody’s home wedged

in the mud along our path.

            My best friend likes to say

things can always get worse

            but when at last our ruin

comes — supervolcano or

            asteroid or climate change

and its spreading deserts

            and its warlords battling

for what little food

            and potable water

still remain — there may be

            a moment (between

its launch and the furthest

            ripple of a missile’s

detonation) when for once

            it’s bad as it will be.

Contributor
Brian Simoneau

Brian Simoneau’s poetry collections are No Small Comfort (Black Lawrence Press, 2021) and River Bound (C&R Press, 2014). His work has appeared in Boston Review, Cincinnati Review, The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, and other journals. Originally from Lowell MA, he lives near Boston with his family.

Posted in Poetry

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