Blooming

John Fenlon Hogan

Post Apocalyptic

I never thought I’d be the one to elegize the walking dead—

Sooner Hitler. Sooner money. Sooner my father,

preemptively, or, preternaturally, myself.

But here, in The Age of Sequels & Remakes, I can’t shirk the image

of taking a nine iron to the Western Hemisphere

of my best friend’s head.

I begin to wonder if human ingenuity amounts to just that:

betrayal and blunt objects.

Where is my fire-and-brimstone?

Where are my sins spread out before me for even my mother to see?

It never occurred to me that the Apocalypse is a disposition,

that it transpires on the inside—

I suck it up and do my best, and then I do my best

to keep my aesthetics to myself—