Assume the Role of Cassandra, Wearing a Mask, Speaking into the Camera

No, nothing, no thing, no where— 
the o of no blinks open 

I think that you think that I think 
too much about grief 

It’s not only mine—we’re in the same current 

You won’t hear it blazing always in the unprocessed 
wind under the voice recording 

I wear my nerve halo, a handful of seeds, a breakdown 
in the blood-brain barrier

It’s come to this: the interstate with star-shaped 
plants and mile markers that multiply one’s belonging 

Can you hear the low pulse tree-growth consuming the fence? 

Books are states of consciousness, a record— 
What won’t finally kill you, you eat its tongue 

Holy I’ll make the alphabet for interrupters, malcontents
Holy is the person who digs the person out the rubble into the grave

About you: weather will taste metallic in the overnight 
visuals, something lightdark, slick-liver-wet 

Put a whisper into a jar, a war 
trots out of your chiaroscuro head

Copyright © 2024 by Carolina Ebeid. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 9, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“Like others in the prophetic line, Cassandra’s vision and analysis of a near-fetched future coming into being were neither heard nor heeded despite the truth it carried. Invoking the stance of a somewhat oracular and glitchy Cassandra, this poem draws on the opacities and transparencies required [when] writing through political, genocidal, immunological, and ecological distress.”
—Carolina Ebeid