spinner’s spun its last spin

after the billboards accrue their thick

layer of grit masking advertisements

for teeth paste & tanqueray gin

after the highways are overtaken

by invasive forests

after the ministers give up their gods

& the rabbis their congregations

for drink

after new men rise to lead us sheep

toward our shearing, to make bed

sheets from our hair

after the high towers have no airplanes

to warn away & instead blink purely

toward heaven like children

with one red eye

after phone lines do nothing

but cut the sky into sheet music

& our phones are just expensive

bricks of metal & glass

after our cloud of photographs collapses

& all memories retreat back

into their privatized skulls

after the water taps gasp out their final

blessing

what then?

when even the local militias run

out of ammunitions

when the blast radii have been

chalked & the missiles do all they were

built to

when us jews have given up our state

for that much older country of walking

& then that even older religion of dirt

when all have succumbed to illness

inside the church of our gutted pharmacies

when the seas eat their cities

when the ground splits like a dress

when the trash continent in the mid-atlantic

at last opens its mouth to spit

what will be left after we’ve left

i dare not consider it

instead dance with me a moment

late in this last extinction

that you are reading this

must be enough

maybe that’s a weird thing to say.

when i say interested i mean,

i’ve compiled a list.

on it are mourning practices

gathered across time & continents

it’s long & oddly comforting

how no one knows a damn thing

about what follows. i wont

share it with you, only say,

evidence suggests neanderthals

were the first hominids to bury

their dead. also, i’ll say they

didn’t possess a written language,

which points toward internment

as a form of document. the body

is ink in the earth. the grave marker,

a gathering together of text.

the first written languages were

pictorial & marked the movement

of goods between peoples.

i don’t know what to do with that

but pretend death’s a similar kind

of commerce: face stamped

into a coin, what’s left of the body

in the belly of a bird, two lines

that meet to make a man

alive again on paper. i know i know,

ashes to ashes & all that dust

to irreverent dust. i know everyone

i love who’s dead didn’t actually

become the poem i wrote about them.

their breath a caught fathered

object thrashing in the white space

between letters. contrary to popular

belief elephants don’t actually bury

their dead lacking the necessary

shovels & opposable thumbs rather

they are known to throw leaves

& dirt upon the deceased & this

is a kind of language. often the tusks

from dead elephants are scrivened

into the shapes of smaller elephants

& sold to travelers who might display

this tragic simulacrum upon

their mantel as a symbol of power

& of passage. when i’m gone, make me again

from my hair. carry me with you

a small book in your pocket.