Sarah Giragosian
The Apocalypse Comes to Bodega Bay
It’s the end of the world,
Tippi Hedren is smoking a cigarette,
and from the schoolhouse the children are singing,
The butter came out a grizzle-y-grey
Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, Now, now, now!
And while the crows file along the steel poles
of the playground by twos, then tens,
the song circles and crests without reason,
growing as grating and absurd
as Tippi’s mink-coated complacency.
When they flee, the glossy bodies cling to their collars,
aiming for the napes of their necks, their earlobes.
They clot the skies and rap through the walls:
mechanical gulls, seabirds riveted to wires,
sparrows in hundreds shattering the laws of nature.
Never doubt the terror of a collective intelligence.
In every apocalypse, the prophet is the local drunk,
and the girl is too beautiful and wild.
Coppery Mitch with his bullet head is hankering
to tame her, then war against the omniscient birds.
Sarah Giragosian is a PhD student in Twentieth Century North American Poetries and Poetics at SUNY-Albany. Her poems have been published in such journals as Crazyhorse, Copper Nickel, and Measure, among others. Her work has been featured on Verse Daily and has recently been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Return to May 2013 Edition
It’s the end of the world,
Tippi Hedren is smoking a cigarette,
and from the schoolhouse the children are singing,
The butter came out a grizzle-y-grey
Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, Now, now, now!
And while the crows file along the steel poles
of the playground by twos, then tens,
the song circles and crests without reason,
growing as grating and absurd
as Tippi’s mink-coated complacency.
When they flee, the glossy bodies cling to their collars,
aiming for the napes of their necks, their earlobes.
They clot the skies and rap through the walls:
mechanical gulls, seabirds riveted to wires,
sparrows in hundreds shattering the laws of nature.
Never doubt the terror of a collective intelligence.
In every apocalypse, the prophet is the local drunk,
and the girl is too beautiful and wild.
Coppery Mitch with his bullet head is hankering
to tame her, then war against the omniscient birds.
Sarah Giragosian is a PhD student in Twentieth Century North American Poetries and Poetics at SUNY-Albany. Her poems have been published in such journals as Crazyhorse, Copper Nickel, and Measure, among others. Her work has been featured on Verse Daily and has recently been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Return to May 2013 Edition