Doomsday

by Amy Gerstler

The dark that’s gathering strength

these days is submissive,

kinky, silken, willing;

stretched taut as a trampoline.

World events rattle by like circus

trains we wave at occasionally,

as striped, homed and spotted

heads poke out their windows.

Feels like I’m wearing a corset,

though I haven’t a stitch on.

Burn the place setting I ate from,

OK? and destroy the easy chair

I languished in. Let birds

unravel my lingerie

for nesting materials.

Fingers poised on the piano keys,

I can’t think what to play.

A dirge, a fugue?

What, exactly, are crimes

against nature? How many

calories are consumed while

lolling in this dimness,

mentally lamenting the lack

of anything to indicate

some faint mirage of right-

mindedness has been sighted

on the horizon? The world

is full of morbid thinkers,

miserable workers and compulsive

doodlers. Darling, my mother

used to croon, you were a happy

accident, like the discovery

of penicillin. When I sense

the zillions of cells in my body

laboring together, such grand

fatigue sweeps over me.

Once in a blue moon I smell

the future’s breath,

that purgatorial whiff

shot through with the scent

of burnt hair, like when sailors

have been drifting at sea

for a long time and suddenly

they see gulls circling

and the ripe composty odor

of land unfurls in the air,

but they’ve no idea whether

an oasis of breadfruit

and pineapple awaits them

or an enclave of cannibals.

Lost in the Forest

by Amy Gerstler

I’d given up hope. Hadn’t eaten in three

days. Resigned to being wolf meat ...

when, unbelievably, I found myself in

a clearing. Two goats with bells

round their necks stared at me:

their pupils like coin slots

in piggy banks. I could have gotten

the truth out of those two,

if goats spoke. I saw leeks

and radishes planted in rows;

wash billowing on a clothesline ...

and the innocuous-looking cottage

in the woods with its lapping tongue

of a welcome mat slurped me in.

In the kitchen, a woman so old her sex

is barely discernible pours a glass

of fraudulent milk. I’m so hungry

my hand shakes. But what is this liquid?

“Drink up, sweetheart,” she says,

and as I wipe the white mustache

off with the back of my hand:

“Atta girl.” Have I stumbled

into the clutches of St. Somebody?

Who can tell. “You’ll find I prevail here

in my own little kingdom,” she says as

she leads me upstairs—her bony grip

on my arm a proclamation of ownership,

as though I've always been hers.