THE THINGS WE WANT MOST



The buildings stand abandoned, tilt
at right angles, shifting sand dunes
slow waves for dead boats. Satellite
picture number one: flames flicker
in empty windows. People must

still be alive here, fighting for
some sort of piss-poor survival.
Satellite picture number two:
A group of men sit around a
fire. The tattoo craze has gone so

far that bare skin is the status
symbol now. The primitives flaunt
Harley buckles and beer can hats,
new holy relics in a pile
beside them: crumpled photographs
of refrigerators filled with condiments,

needlepoint samplers,
censers, silver candlesticks, and
life-sized oil paintings of Jesus.

BOMB SHELTER     



I built my bomb shelter because
I want to see what will happen
to my garden after The Bomb.
I fully intend to go in
when the first sirens go off, plan

to shut myself up tight and live
through however many blasts of
intense radiation we all
get hit with. After a month or
so, I’m going to come back up, pop

my head outside, take a look at
the back yard to see how the plants
are doing. It’s not so much that
I’ve seen a number of horror
movies featuring man-eating
plants, poisonous plants, angry plants,
brought to mobile life by a blast
of radiation. It’s more that
I just want to see how far this
whole gardening thing can go, to

see what’s beyond watering
and basic fertilizing. I
desperately want to see some
beautiful, drastic mutant change
in my garden, to see snaky
tendrils waving threateningly
at me from beneath the birch tree,
tiny green heads snapping at my
feet through the grass, the tree itself
taking a good, hard swing in my

direction. I think that’d be
really cool.

THE NEW FARM



we plant the apple trees in long, straight rows, twist
the thin, soft limbs into gang symbols, secret signs
chuckle amongst ourselves at the thought of a someday forest of giant hands
flash-frozen in “East Side!” “Longhorns!” and “peace.”

halfway through the day, we break for lunch, spread picnic blankets
on the unturned earth, contemplate the mechanics
of crop circles, wonder
how many sunflowers we’d have to plant
to make a smiley face visible from space.