Sixty-six million years after the end of the world, I click purchase
on an emergency go bag from Amazon. When it arrives, I’ll use my teeth
to tear open the plastic, unzip the pack stitched by girls who look like me
but for their N95s, half a judgment day away, no evacuation plan in sight.
Another episode of the present tense, and I can’t stop thinking
about the timeline where the asteroid misses, Earth ruled eternally
by the car-hearted and walnut-brained.
Photograph by Mengwen Caoand I’m thinking of the years I spent sweating
to the choreo of every K-pop song with a decent
dance break, me and the other girls from church,
practically saintly in our diligence as we
rehearsed our isolations and body rolls, winding
and rewinding the tapes, our noses almost
grazing the screen, though in truth I only understood
maybe about half the words, the other half
mostly sounds, which nevertheless sank
into my muscles, pathways laid by so many
hours of indu
Lord, I confess I want the clarity of catastrophe but not the catastrophe.
Like everyone else, I want a storm I can dance in.
I want an excuse to change my life.The day A. died, the sun was brighter than any sun.
I answered the phone, and a channel opened
between my stupid head and heaven, or what was left of it. The blankness
stared back; and I made sound after sound with my blood-wet gullet.