shelter
4 Minutes Read Time
I
we love the taste of smoke.
we fry meat in a shallow pan.
keep the fat & render. keep the fat
& clean out your mouth. make your tongue
an altar to silence. we live in peaceful times.
we can stay at home & wait it out.
we can watch the fire, & it will stay fire:
stay small & tame & almost touchable.
II
the bunks squeak & itch in the lights-off we’re calling night.
we lost track some days ago, maybe weeks—we don’t keep
any ideas about outside anymore—they eat up too much air
& though we know our underground oxygen is filtered
& perfect, smelling of the plastic tubes that bring it here,
we treat it as rations—which is to say we’ve run out of things
to talk about, to cry over, to wonder at. our overhead world
where we were born lucky, where we learned the fear that drove us
down below the worms, chased us to where even the hot breath
of metals could not reach us, is likely closer to how we imagine
than to what we remember. this is our house now. call it your home.
III
we turn on lights to signify morning, we complete
daily chores of farm & factory, down rationed water
cutting the taste of metal with more metal
& open the rusted cans we call nourishment.
there is much time. we draw plans for an underground city
with gardens powered by electric suns & so many rooms
to walk between, where we will raise chickens from cells
whose unpotted meat we will taste & taste.
we will not fear being alone there, surrounded by living bodies
—what we made to rebuild the burned above us.
IV
His world gone to the heathens & those who deny Him
& down we came us saved by the grace of Him
as we rubbed our bodies down with sackcloth as we prayed for deliverance
He heard us down on our knees our skin made red for Him
His spirit o holy called down to the silos called for millennium &
fires came symbols in the smoke burning away the lies
(we lost some in our descent we lost whole houses & days of light
some of us hear our gone children in the generator hum
some of us make toward the door hoping to be cast out)
yes He opened a window to where our new world will begin
& we followed Him down
V
me, my warm, came down here a life ago,
on a day of sirens. we carried provisions: cans, books, a radio,
a gun. we were preparing for winter. we were waiting
for smoke & fists at our door. we were cloaked
in our warmest coats. all of us hands. there were many
skins like me, talking & stinking. no quiet for weeks
till you told me your name. we killed, we dragged,
closed the door behind us & never
opened again, not even after the stench, not even
after the vermin who survived just like we did
didn’t they? burrowing up through cracks
in our tomb
—I have always lived here alone.
I kept us the living. I’m waiting for the poison,
to decay like a body. half by half. the air above-dirt
—particle rich with ions old as who-knows. you in my pulse.
I’ve learned the codes in us, the drumming. it cuts
the ringing in the silence. burning & ready to gnaw on us.
what is a machine’s atlas—you blood-mechanism
keeping the red in me.
VI
a storm outside wails against the steel
telling us we never should have forced this un-survival
we wait rotting in this hollow place we’ve built
so unlike the before we barely remember the engines
groaning like mourners the lights flicker again
again in the fading electricity we ration the water
& the last cans of bland protein aren’t we waiting
for someone to find us some sweet voice to knock
& call come outside you win you win
you lived
VII
this tomb, this construct appeared in the field
like driftwood floating to the surface of a river.
we pried the thing open with the crowbars we carry.
inside there were only bones & rust. we walk this land
knowing what it means—salve the burns & keep moving—
hoping we die somewhere with shade, where nothing will eat
what’s left of us. there are monstrous things thriving in the air.
they will overtake us, overthrow. when we are gone, the dirt
will continue to bake in the sun & perhaps one day saplings
will grow there. blooming with what destroyed us.
Read more from Issue 21.2.
