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  • Issue 33
  • Sleeping through the End Days

Published by Poetry Editor on February 20, 2017. This item is listed in Issue 33, Issue 33 Poetry, Poetry

Sleeping through the End Days

Horsemen in black boots shine
against the dead streets, peering in each window,
smashing in every door.

The house begins to smolder;
smoke like thick liquid rises silently and fast,
closing our ears with a flood of dark.

The yellowing stars go out
like theatergoers after a disturbing performance
stumbling in the aisles, whispering angrily.

Zeppelin angels drift overhead,
each arcing sword a roar of blue flame,
their robes ballooning with hot air.

Somnambulant, we lose our way
in baroque murals, trompe-l’oeil gardens,
a flaking fresco of falsehood and denial

whose far horizon holds an ancient ridge
of mountains, crumbling like a fossil spine.
We will cross them safely into another country.

— F.J. Bergmann
F.J. Bergmann edits poetry for Star*Line, the journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association (sfpoetry.com) and Mobius: The Journal of Social Change (mobiusmagazine.com), and imagines tragedies on or near exoplanets. Her chapbook A Catalogue of the Further Suns recently won the Gold Line Press manuscript competition.

Editor’s Notes: From publicdomainpictures.net, the fiery “lord of darkness” is combined with saucers and stormtroopers.

Tags: F.J. Bergmann, Poetry