Eventuality
Someone’s buried in the rubble of a burlesque hall
fallen after two tectonic plates bumped uglies.
Couldn’t wait another epoch for new monsters
just like us but softer. Somewhere else your best friend’s
bending over for a man who makes believing hot.
Five times she watches as he bows. He pits his faith
against her love. It’s not enough. She leaks it
everywhere they go, that love. She soaks her clothes,
color-blocked, wrung out on the sidewalk. Sure
she knows about calderas long past due, nukes
in North Korea aimed like loaded cocks. What offspring!
Still she’ll build things: children stacked up on the shore
all sand and time. The tide abiding plays its rising
like a quiet execution. Shhh, my sweet; don’t think
on after. Now we’re naked on the pullout, losing interest.
We’re no better than the rest.
Robin Richardson is the author of two collections of poetry, and is Editor-in-Chief at Minola Review. Her work has appeared in Salon, Poetry Magazine, Hazlitt, Tin House, Partisan, Joyland, and The North American Review, among others. She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, and has been shortlisted for the CBC, Walrus, and Lemon Hound Poetry Prizes, among others. Richardson’s latest collection, Sit How You Want, is forthcoming with Véhicule Press. Poems from the collection have been adapted to song by composer Andrew Staniland for The Brooklyn Art Song Society. Richardson’s memoir Like Father is forthcoming.