Rogue Poem: "New Pripyat, Ontario"

New Pripyat, Ontario

It takes an ocean in any direction.

Understand our ancestors died

before they could devour us.

The cold is still. Beams

split the mile-wide mushroom cap

where antennas huddled / two days

in a Colorado low.

Escher’s hedges

seizing with chickadees,

Monet’s vial seeps

snow-blind down creek;

as imports assimilate / quietly

retire at the ribbon-cut,

grass doughnuts ebb native

beneath evergreens.

I peek the sidewalk antipodes

for North Korea / between cracks

whether they’re scratching

however remote.


Winter, 2013.