Rust dripped down the gray hides of Black
Sea battleships docked at Sevastopol—
Hannibal’s elephants knee-deep in snow.
In 218 BC, the Alps were real mountains.
Vladimir Putin looks like a patient on steroids
scaling the Gotthard Pass or maybe sliding down.
I can say I love you in Russian
in case his storm troops arrive.
My parents spotted Mary Pickford in the aisle
of a Broadway theatre and diagnosed steroids.
I’m traveling to Hawaii, I tell a friend who
predicts I may be the only one of us to survive.
Could nuclear winter bury someone
who won’t read Cormac McCarthy?
You know who.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 26, Issue 6.
A Yonkers resident, Marion Brown holds a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. Finishing Line Press published her chapbooks Tasted and The Morning After Summer. Her poem “In the Dock, Fagin Reflects” won First Prize in the Portico Poetry Competition. Her poems have appeared in Guesthouse, the Women’s Review of Books, Kestrel, The Night Heron Barks, DIAGRAM and elsewhere. She serves on the Advisory Committee of Slapering Hol Press and the National Council of Graywolf Press. Learn more at marionbrownpoet.com.
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