Thrush Poetry Journal
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J.P. Grasser
​

At Last
 
Because, in the beginning, the minds

of men had not yet swung the idea

of Time into the noosed-shape

it of course makes, they could not see

their histories as deciduous, but instead 

believed progress meant forward,

only forward, sword, then steam,

then silicon, & so moved toward

the future as if it were a solid state,

as if they wished upon themselves

an endpoint. One says the minds

of men, because who else, what other

type, should use its rarest muscle

to take an idea & from it fashion

an arrow.

                In the beginning,

the corporate sharecroppers

of Iowa found themselves proud

owners of beachfront shacks

& the Texans gouged prices,

charging an arm & leg both,

to watch the Southern Lights

shed gamma rays like the molten

feathers of ostriches.

                                 In the beginning

none gawked; few found

glee in the vast spectacles

of animal migration. Already

their stories were filled

with displacement, with droves

of creatures un-homed, filled

already with consequence

but never the topographies

of inaction—their montages

& dreams alike were woven

of destruction—& so it was

not the skies awash with ash

& vultures that struck them

as surprising, but rather the sheer

multitudes. The bellies of the dead

swelled with maggots. The flies

bloomed to dense clouds,

& with them the birds became

ever fruitful. The sky was bluer

for the sheets of bluebirds who

hung there, looping & frantic.

On every wire, an abacus of crows.

Already they were conditioned

to fear the stench of burning

flesh, the acridity of tire-fires.

They had not planned to smell

boiled halibut, broccoli steaming

in the fields.

                     In the beginning

they were so kind to themselves.

In the beginning they washed

their cats & gerbils as once they

washed apples. In the beginning

they chiseled shelves into cave-walls

& there preserved the great minds.

In the beginning, they boarded

up every window. They said window

so often, crossing the panes

with duct-tape, covering the panes

with the compressed flesh of balsa trees,

that the word itself sounded closer

to winnow with each passing day.




A Wallace Stegner Fellow, J.P. Grasser is a doctoral candidate in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of Utah, where he serves as Editor-in-Chief for Quarterly West. Read more at: www.jpgrasser.com



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