by Brad Liening
I.
Too dumb to do anything but live
Through the long decline
Where the worst get entrenched get rich
Invent new definitions for terror
You wear like zip ties or a CPAP machine
An N95 for a summer of bad air
Borne by winds from a country lit by fire
Yet what choice while they surveil the rubble and ashes
But to love cats and family a guinea pig
Liberated from the terror of an overcrowded third grade classroom
Who considers me her enemy despite my best efforts
It’s not impossible to love
Both cats and rodents
An acquaintance’s rat peeing on me
Before my big interview
There’s always a personal cost
Speeding to the store just before close for medicine
Thus releasing 1,000 years of pollution
I watch a storm blow through too fast
Here comes relentless heat
Obviously I didn’t get the job
II.
You can’t remember a time when your dreams weren’t anxious
Racing to the bottom of a bottomless pit
Dread rising in a rotten yellow fog
Work family your body in disarray and old friends from high school
Back from the dead to throw your glasses in the trash
And claim to have not once ever remembered your name
III.
The river has seen better days
Refusing to freeze over in winter
Too shiny too fast in summer
Maybe it’s all the shiftless kids
Playing in it or the screaming
We sometimes hear Lord knows
The last of the fish don’t like the helicopters
Who does we tried to eat them
But now that the president has our papers
He rides off on a contaminated wave
Our brand-new national anthem
Playing long into the night
****
Brad Liening is originally from Michigan. Recent work has appeared in Ritual Dagger, Orpheus, Midcult*, and elsewhere. More can be found at bradliening.blogspot.com.