These days, as humans fidget and toy with the extinction deadline,
the moon recedes from the sky
above the Alaskan suburbs lit by midnights
accumulated over a small span of centuries.
During a city-dark gloaming, I walk along one
long graveyard to the fast fashion brand’s new American
headquarters. The Hotel California
immolates inadequately with a spectrum of Earth-fed red.
Torch Lake lays out an ink-saturated canvas
for old money’s latest anti-fouling motorboat.
Little boys in big bodies pale-dapple the deck,
drunk. Sniggering. To the slivers of moon that peek through the pollution—
Give us a gloaming to fear;
leagues of dead stars crashing down, clearing the fray.
For the sum total of opposable frisking and industrial audacity
of this species: blankets of star belladonna.
Grey Sparrow Journal 