KJ Hannah Greenberg

Trees yield,
To grass or shore.
Budding boughs, shoots,
Defined by vertiginous
Stems, two leaves wide,
Yellow-green life passels
Pressed like hands, jointly
They’re prayer.
Oxygenating
Us, birds,
Critters,
Realms,
Worlds,
Imparting,
Ever so freely.

The sports of shrimp babies, those decapod crustaceans,
Minus mainlanders’ blue rocks, iridescent stones, ice,
Round little ponies, frosted cupcakes, cockershells, orchids,
Seem calculated for their elongated bodies, nothing more.

When critters rely, primarily, on whirling as their approach to locomotion,
On paddling with swimmerets, not turning cartwheels, nor jumping branches,
They discover screaming for help means screeching or otherwise shrieking
For safety. Consider, stalk-eyed beasts’ shelter’s only found in sediment diving.

Prawn, after all, remain so low on the food chain as to be expendable.
They lack rocking horse dreams, know no warm breakfasts of frumenty,
See no flames tickling heat into empty spaces, except for intervals like
Oil spills, finned predators, many troubles lancing their domain.

Lava bits dancing, dancing, dancing,
Flame fingers dancing all dark long.
Learning page prancing, prancing, prancing,
Lessons from prancing all dark long.
Lamenting romance, romance, romance,
Woodland copse romance all dark long.
Prodigal chances, chances, chances,
Tomorrow’s chances all dark long.
Lodging no answers, answers, answers,
Praying for answers all dark long.
Cycles spill questions, questions, questions,
Sons and their questions all dark long.
Dangerous letters, letters, letters,
Queries, not letters, all dark long.
Fire and water, water, water,
Volcanic water all dark long.
Gone astray children, children, children,
Romance’s children all dark long.

Personal rules of interpretation, like flattened leafy thalli,
Those foliose growing among cold rocks, usually yield little.
See, accretion requires, whether among persons or flora,
Simple, direct, functional choices to cull truth, survive daily.

Not possible to pay enough cottonseed oil or cornmeal cakes
To generate aesthetic norms, to ride the best merry-go-round
Horse, to pump hard, extremities burning, down a high knoll;
The sun fashions brightness and shadow, makes gusts pucker.

When clouds puff voluptuously, when sky cotton also drifts,
Raindrops get blamed for bollixing picnics, for messing with
Outdoor concerts, backyard weddings, volleyball games, jazz.
(Nothing’s said of the many sere gardens that bloom thereafter.)

Without having to understand mechanisms,
TEOTWAWKI could be a time of killing
Cherished bunkmates, delivering “love notes”
Filled with anthrax, gifting solace via
Suicide squads, government thugs, Big
Brother organizations, or, maybe, the seeding
Of highway meridians with oxeye daisies.

Mass graves won’t be dug at family
Gatherings, picnics, walks in the park.
When making compote rich in wine,
It’ll still okay to drizzle cinnamon, chop
In grapes, add toasted coconut. Many
Buildings yet standing will source safe
Comestibles, offer culinary consolation.

Like erstwhile friends, we won’t brook:
Expecting money back guarantees, the
Resurrection of half-dead creatures, old
School morality, well-intended sharing.
They’ll be no privacy of rented spaces,
No teatime biscuits steeped ‘til ready,
Just navy seals skulking among copses.

Woodlands won’t be playgrounds. No
Orchards will stay unclaimed. Vast fields
Will get marked as boot reflex provisions.
Enforcers, not extermination camps, will
Determine seasoned park workers’ strength.
Well-armed others will survive by pulling
Stuff, ransacking chosen, assaulted bodies.

Despite earlier celebrated mutual norms,
It will be laughable to hike out from cities.
Abruptly, alliances will seem less vital
Than signal mirrors, whistles, magnetic
Compasses, lighters, boots, lead pencils,
Multi-tools, radios, smoke grenades,
No one will bother learning calculus.

Having jumped across torn limbs, scouts
Will view upright trees as principled allies.
Singular persons, if perspicacious, will auction
Pets for tourniquets and purification tablets.
Dear hearts will search mag-lights and rifles.
(The rest of us will limit interviews to select
Prisoners, after stealing all handy bashas.)

Some small lizards,
All green fierceness,
Protective of sill plus
Sunny stoop, assembled.

News rang around that
Distant critters, chitin-
Covered clans, marched
Land to land, determined
To achieve biotic conquest.

Sticky tongues adequately
Acceded most of those bugs
To space in reptilian intestines.
Scaly’s newest cohort prospered.