locusts
regolith boils beneath stalks of brittlebrown
grass: swelter-splayed tibias rising over our toes
and above our ears. my fingers in your hair,
cassandra, the only satisfaction we still know
rippling through our shoulder blades
age takes everything from us, or rich men
do, cocksure beasts of marrow-stained teeth
whom the progressive years do nothing to
stop—and so the decade reaps and sorts chaff
in shear apathy. we will grind our last
toast from agamemnon’s bones. my cassandra, ruby-raw-throat
stammering spake once of coming hunger, her hands find me
of late all gnawed like hardtack. the neighbors believe
when she says it will only get worse. and she smiles,
this is new and it is now but it is nothing.
for our copulance, there are only wings and thighs,
cumming ajaw as we watch our husks grind
in the mirror. the teevee spins climate refugee yarn, smothering
the little ones in the front yard, tykes basking botulitic,
the m-r-es ferment and turn by supper.
cassandra grabs a shovel, mumbling urban forage
and we debase the nearby shoot-up park to the sound
of mass protest: cabasa, car horn, shekere.
she promises roots and burdock and wild carrot and
instead finds a yawping earth maw gazing back.
in the forever summer, the farmer leaves the field fallow
and despite all warnings, the local gardener huffs round
up, and the government promises desalination and and and
decarbonization—it is too late
starving grasshoppers burrow
underground and we fuck ourselves into a frenzy.
this is how locusts are made: trading suffering
for serotonin, bondage release, making music
from our misery, singing the only song we still know:
it sounds like the hands of a clock: it sounds
like a bike chain slapping: it sounds like famine-
-coughing: trumpets call and wings unfurl
we take flight, eating whatever we find—prey
from the mouths of foxes, wool from the backs of sheep,
silk from the suits of brooks brothers thieves
and milk-thin marrow the same. this is the way
the world ends:
Rucker Manley (they/he) is a writer living in Vancouver, BC, by way of Los Angeles and South Georgia. They have previously published work in Screen Door Review and Cathexis Northwest Press.