Adi Magazine

i long for this ordinary apocalypse, my hands still as i knead
flour, wet with oil, as i watch the yeast rise as
it wants for water,

there are children outside playing in the asphalt, they are
throwing meagre kittens around that wail for their mothers

small dogs gather and lick their wounds, the people run from
their buildings shrieking, there’s glass everywhere
it's hot as it first was, when they pulled it out of sand, it drips
down, and the blocks come tumbling down

an old man stands, and points up at the birds, my favourite
magpie, is in the garden again, it swoops down with a flock
i feed them what little grain i have left over

in their own way they bless me, when the wailing people reach
me, i hide inside of my house

all their money is burning up around them

i suppose this is the aftershock, some things have always been
flammable;

their good houses, their gardens, their gardenias
their goodness,

they flock to the prayer houses, and try to pray the light away

but it continues, hard, unrelenting,

even when they lie against the ground, whispering, there is no
shadow,


i have dreamt it before, this terrible reckoning, this gaping

i yearn to meet it, its rays approach my house
i leave out my wet dough, and my wet clothes
i strip naked and stand in it, and i don’t burn

i want to say this is the proof they asked me for once, but there
is noone to tell

not the smudged horizon, not the smoke from the prayer houses,
not the city, not the people

not their clamour