Vijay Seshadri
First I had three
apocalyptic visions, each more terrible than the last.
The graves open, and the sea rises to kill us all.
Then the doorbell rang, and I went downstairs and signed for two packages——
one just an envelope, but the other long and bulky, difficult to manage——
both for my neighbor Gus. “You're never not at home,”
the FedEx guy said appreciatively.
It's true. I don't shave, or even wash. I keep the air-conditioners roaring.
Though it's summer,
one of the beautiful red-and-conifer-green Bayside Fuel Oil trucks
that bed down in the depot by the canal
was refreshing the subsurface tanks with black draughts
wrung from the rock, blood of the rock
sucked up from the crevices.
The driver looked unconcerned. Leaning slightly on each other,
Frank and Louise stepped over his hose and walked by slowly,
on the way to their cardiologist.