Abandoned Suburb
Life is everywhere. Deer graze on the tender tips of knee-high grasses. A mother herds her goslings on a skiff of ice, then pushes it away from shore. Prairie flowers bloom. A pickup truck caught fire there, burning down a stand of trees. A dozen or so tents are clustered around a pump: people once washed golf balls with it. Safer here than in the houses, some stripped by looters, some guarded by police. Where did the berries spring from, who stocked the ponds with fish? A girl among them is feverish, it is morning, she wakes up coughing. Crows call nearby. The other children wait for school. What is more worth learning than how to hunt, how to make electric light from a nail, some copper wire, and some salt, scavenged from outside? The pups that suckle in the cab are feral. We need them, we will tame them. Some say, they barely dare admit it, what with all we’ve lost, what did we lose? Have we fallen?
originally published in Grain magazine
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