11 November 2006 | Vol. 6, No. 3

How It Won't Be

by PAUL GUEST

In glorious black and white with the surge

of salt foam racing around the isle

of our twining bodies. Punctuated

by fireworks, by rain, by snow,

by safely errant trajectories

of bullets and tanks and strafing biplanes

in the star freckled sky. Aswoon,

afloat, afire, astride, aloft, akimbo,

none of these, no. Not

in the orbit of the earth or its molten core,

where gravity dissipates

at the last, where the seed

of the world floats within itself

far from the eyes

of you and me. In the largest eyes ever,

the goggling gimlets

of the Architeuthis

as we sink in the inkwell dark

of the blind ocean.

As extras in the cast of Yog the Space Amoeba,

mouthing Japanese

we never before knew,

our fear real, the danger fake,

each building burnt

like a cheap cigarette,

down to an ashen stub, down to the loveless earth

where you say to me

we must run or die.