Today's poem is by Kim Addonizio

Eschatology
       

No way this ends with everyone rising from the family plot
& rattling toward the celestial courthouse to be judged. Are we all frightened villagers?

Well, yes. Everyone's cowering from something. Right now, yet another atmospheric river
is dumping stalled container ships of rain on the house, uprooting trees on the hillside

& in the Christ-addled brain of my neighbor, the divine horses are being brushed & saddled,
angels are polishing their instruments, struggling into their armor. It's true

that things look more accurate, prediction-wise, if your prediction is more flooding & wildfires,
more monstrous bugs scuttling toward the corridors of power. My neighbor believes

she's pure enough to be resurrected & Hoovered into heaven while the secular infidels moan
about science & get trampled underfoot. If I have to think about resurrection, all I see

is a Netflix series where reanimated jake-legged corpses shuffle through the streets
while the real humans kill them again, & sometimes each other, the compromised world

of the future pretty much already here. But how did we get into this discussion?
Someone brought up the apocalypse at the barbeque last week

over a few grilling chicken thighs. My neighbor, who thinks I'm the Whore of Babylon,
watched me disapprovingly as I refilled my wine glass of abominations

& spoke of God's people as credulous idiots. She said she would pray for me,
smug in the knowledge of my imminent destruction. Oh, to be that certain.

I almost admired her. But like the Whore of Babylon I was
I told the dirtiest joke I could think of, & watched her grow red-faced & offended,

& there the neighborly visit quickly ended.

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Copyright © 2024 Kim Addonizio All rights reserved
from ONE ART: a journal of poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission