by Beth Gordon

– after Andrea Kowch

Today the world is not ending. Our clothes infused with the ghosts of tulips. The loud souls of forsythia. A hidden vineyard. Today I am pretending that tomorrow is real. My darling. My infinite flower. You are the reason I dance. My ankles swelling year over year. At the bottom of the man-made path we find a crevice of water. A shimmering of fool’s gold. Mud & tadpoles & dragonflies & an impossible field of plum trees. We are not dancing to any remembered tune. We are not dancing in sync with the pink moon. Egg moon. Sprouting grass moon. There is a hurricane lurking in every heart. Board the windows. Collect the animals. Climb onto the roof & wait for lightning. Today I am a windmill. I am an emergency evacuation. The world is not ending. The world is ending today.

Beth Gordon’s poems have been published in Poet Lore, Citron Review, SWWIM, Pithead Chapel, Moist Poetry, Okay Donkey and others. She is the author of several chapbooks including The Water Cycle (2022, Variant Literature). Beth is Managing Editor of Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Assistant Editor of Animal Heart Press, and Grandma of Femme Salve Books. Twitter and Instagram @bethgordonpoet.