Collapse

By Mark Everett Wittmer

“Pie in the Sky” by Jasper Glen

Baltimore shimmers in the record heat. I shiver

at the new smells baked out of the harbor,

then trip over a barnacle-encrusted Lime scooter

some unhoused angler fished up.

What will he hook next -

an eel living in a beer can,

algae choked by oil spills,

a bloated corpse?

The bodies of construction workers

are still underwater.

If no kaiju rises from the sea to wreak its vengeance,

I will buckle like a bridge.

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Mark Everett Wittmer is a poet who lives in Baltimore.

Jasper Glen is a poet and artist from Vancouver. His work appears or is forthcoming in The Brooklyn Review, A Gathering of the Tribes, Adelaide Magazine, BlazeVOX, Amsterdam Quarterly, Word For/ Word, Another Chicago Magazine, and elsewhere. Poems have been nominated for Best New Poets and the Pushcart Prize. See jasperglen.com.