Jeannine Hall Gailey
Anxiety, Post-Apocalyptic Futures, Whatever: A New Song
I knew we were tired of looking at mushroom clouds in the ceiling tiles, tired of robots
replacing our arms with metal rods. It was time again to call out in the darkness, tidings
of gladness. In one hand I hid apples; in another, pieces of eight. We were left alone with
barely any time. One night I crept into the cavern where a boy lay with a wool blanket
wrapped around his torso. He looked so real, sleeping there, I almost touched his
eyelashes. The cave was full of coughing, this time the tirade was real, the plague
unanswerable by human tongues. In a bag are a pair of mittens, still tied together, a pair
of tongs, and a chemical hotplate. One bottle of grapeseed oil, another of goat’s milk.
Were there flowers
or were there only
cracks in the glass?
Only the toadstools know for sure. Once we prayed to the gleaming red eyes of the
machine, once we spoke in code and knew our paths were righteous. But now, now, only
sticks and stones are left and we are tired of all the breaking. Whatever language, we are
asking for praise, for freedom in the cornfields, for the rebirth of the sun.
Bio
Jeannine Hall Gailey is the author of Becoming the Villainess (Steel Toe Books, 2006) and She Returns to the Floating World (Kitsune Books, 2011.) Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in journals like The Iowa Review, The Seattle Review, and Prairie Schooner. She volunteers as an editorial consultant for Crab Creek Review and currently teaches at the MFA program at National University. Her web site is www.webbish6.com.