trappists by allison emily lee

The world doesn’t end.
-Charles Simic

​I carefully explain                 survival in nuclear winter
I cannot tell you the codes               but the seed banks
are slowly emptying             fields of wheat flattened by
dust                 roads sinking into the desiccated aquifers
the earth’s mass shrinks daily         the elevator above
the desert       grows             and grows      and grows
a silver ribbon           that looks farther and farther away
as we climb the mesa            scaling tombs dyed with
bloody handprints                they too clawed against the
hardscrabble scorpion landscape   dreaming of cool
black space                worshipping an image of     blue
marbled satellites      circling a gentler sun                        gold
green              soft      our dry lips healed with water.

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Allison Emily Lee is a writer living in San Francisco. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from SEVERINE, Bop Dead City, Bird's Thumb and Lit.Cat among others. She is the founder and editor of Daphne Magazine. You can visit her online at allisonemilylee.com