~
Power and Light
My twin obsessions:
fixating on when and how the world will end
and doing nothing to prepare myself.
Sure, we’re in a stand-off with North Korea,
but the time I might use to dig
a bunker is better spent reading
and brushing up on my Spanish
for that vacation in March
(if there IS a March).
And sure, there’s a nuclear power plant
in California that’s on a fault line
near the ocean, but the only time I could be
using to practice for a sightless life
after the blinding, sterilizing fallout?
Television.
Besides, most practical accounts predict
social collapse will be slower.
Step 1: Exterior threat
Step 2: Imposition of martial law
Step 3: Etc., etc., etc.
Step 4: Lawless wasteland where strength is the only authority
Despite my lack of preparation,
I seem to think I’ll make it, my commitment
to novels and Netflix and “15 minute
workouts to a better you”
all a program for looking really good
in a tanktop and cargo pants,
for farming my postage-stamp
backyard with one hand,
fending off ravagers with the shotgun
I’ve never owned with the other.
(I am nothing if not an optimist.)
My obsessions go hand in hand;
I get the immediate pleasure
of doing nothing paired with the daydream
satisfaction of a simple life farming the wasteland.
But look on the bright side—
maybe when the chips are down,
and life as I know it ends in a flash
of power and light—
I’ll die.
~
Frances Klein
Frances Klein is a disabled poet and teacher. She was born and raised in Southeast Alaska. Klein has been published in The Literary Journal of the Vonnegut Memorial Library and Tupelo Press, among others. She serves as an assistant editor at Southern Humanities Review.