poetry Apocalypse Now

Poet Sally Mansfield Abbott finds that "doomscrolling" offers exactly what its name implies.

Sally Mansfield Abbott
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I scan in my bar code,
Download Morning Cuppa Joe,
And scroll through the latest travesties.

The Four Horsemen of war, 
Sanction-created famine, death, and disease,
All say “Made in USA.”

Our country’s hair trigger temper goes off 
24/7 military time,

GI Joes hunched over 
Video consoles shouting:
“Play time!”
Unleash Reaper drones
Loaded with Hellfire missiles.

Regime change
Yankee style

A culture and its history,
The Cradle of Civilization
Destroyed by remote.
Raqqa decimated
Not one stone stands.

At home, no voice is raised in outrage.
No one in the street.
That too has been
Eviscerated

I think I’ll take a selfie with all the latest 
Worldwide calamities,

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,
Post it on Instagram and see who salutes.

 

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Sally Mansfield Abbott is the author of a coming-of-age novel, Miami in Virgo. She has taught classes on Goddess Worship in Prehistory at a number of colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Her poetry and essays have been published in a variety of journals and online magazines, most recently The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Counterpunch, Persimmon Tree, the Feminism and Religion Blog, and femspec.