Michael Rerick

History Storm

I
JFK died today in our country’s conspiracy. While we sit on porches hardtop BMWs blast punk podcasts referring to rap with Adam and Eve codes delineating Douglas fir bristles. A senator declares a great mistake and continues to senate. Bright yellows splash our museum. The ocean timidly laps before a heroic sail and on its return. We subscribe to pick up pizza and exchange with a slightly upset worker wearing a Pop Culture Leftovers tee shirt we cannot quite comment on. Second generation Puritan and Pilgrim settlements chop wood. 

II
Small volcanoes exchange hands with investment winks linking Egyptian uprisings, American dollars, and Mayan hot chocolates. Rent-a-pineapple tanks after true globalism. Neighborhood grand pianos outnumber the piano tuner in her apartment. Cargo ships dance across nefarious linen pant lanes porting night flashed security lights. A city street park dedicates water to a bronze elk. 

III
A god transmission from space carries away those that know they are selected. 21st century recycling sorts which plastics will cover the earth. Normalized alien abductions become less meaningful in galactic conspiracies. Green symbolizes both monetary production and its dissolution. A 1960s Vatican ratifies inclusion. Cartridges print thousands of love words that float coast to coast. 

IV
1970s America embraces murder intimacy. Then the 80s with the inclusion of metal and mental hugs. A connected, semi-wealthy person can be president, progressively, but not all at once. Breeze along a desert wash reminds walkers of rain and flood. Sunny winter commutes inspire eggplant emojis. Addition and association conspire 7 8 9 in a jail cell without cameras, without a confession or interrogation. 

V
Cotton Mathers stands on a sturdy soapbox. When the weather isn’t volatile, a full moon will do. We own the gun control problem. We clean the river because Walt Whitman wants children’s poems inscribed on small beach rocks under the bridge. Beautiful profiles post, swipe, and disappear. The morning zoo moves toward extinction. We wonder at the Pope’s daily schedule and what chairs he sits in. New flags flutters green, white, blue, and yellow.

***

Michael Rerick lives and teaches in Portland, OR. His work recently appears or is forthcoming in Clade Song, COAST|noCOAST, Epigraph Magazine, Graviton, Mannequin Haus, Marsh Hawk Review, and Parentheses. He is also the author of In Ways Impossible to Fold, morefrom, The Kingdom of Blizzards, The Switch Yards, and X-Ray.