notdeermag
A Lexicon for Apocalypse, Ariel Moniz
Also appears in Voyager Magazine
It has that iron teeth, gunpowder reek
and I know then what comes—
it will taste like blood in the earth,
devour like mud worshipping
at the swaying feet of a guillotine.
No one undresses a martyr
before the crackle of the stake,
for the same reason that they gather there—
here are no words that reach
the ears of a mob or a frightened thing.
It will come, coagulated
like lies around a trembling truth,
and I too would wish to be a fool
if I didn’t already know the taste of
the bitter seeds of this poison fruit.
It’s not a gaping wound or snakebite ooze,
it does not wear me as a trinket of a curse—
to know about the end of the earth
you need only look at those hands
with five fingers and fortunes in their palms.
Do you see it now, you, a detonator,
you, flesh that never sleeps?
Look at us, swollen ego,
we know ourselves, festering sore,
and tell me if there has ever been a creature
that deserved its fate more?
What will we do with the words
buried beneath our rolling heads?
Where will we carry the burden
of this lexicon for our greatest fear?
In what pocket, what grave, can it rest?
What wind will stoke the ashes,
carry the cry out over the silent earth
snapping free from the oblivion we created,
“We were here!”
Ariel K. Moniz is a lifelong writer and voracious reader. Her work can be found in Blood Bath Literary Zine, The Raven Review, Pussy Magic, and Vamp Cat Magazine, among others. She is currently writing her first novel and poetry collection. You can visit her at kissoftheseventhstar.home.blog