apocalyptic lyric

a line break        is a kind of lie       my friend says

            yet still        he writes

an encore        over and over        the lyric

            a border wall        topped        by concertina wire

improbably survives

            as does the sound       of honeybees

and monarchy

            as did the man        on the Golden Gate        who leapt

after he fed        the parking meter

Copyright © 2022 by Cintia Santana. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 14, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“For some time, I’ve wondered how and why the lyric continues to survive in a world of unremitting violence. In a workshop led by Brian Teare, I gathered seeds scattered in my notebooks over the years: a comment made by my friend, the poet Brian Cochran; an encounter with the word ‘concertina’; a moment of disbelief while tuning in to The Crown; and the news, the news, the news. The oldest seed, hardly dormant, was an interview I’d heard around 2008, with a man who had jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge and survived. The poem insists on a syntax both indefinite and, I hope, unpredictable.”
—Cintia Santana