Imagine a sky-blue metallic gauze
Imagine a sky-blue metallic gauze net wafting like a storm from the west
glittering Sandia rays bouncing off mountains, cotton candy clouds nested in baby blue
imagine the net falls on Albuquerque, you check the news—it’s everywhere, folks—sit tight—
then the lights go out, the water stops, nothing works; phones, TVs, internet all go dead—people mill about; some plan to walk to Colorado but it’s a no go. They come back saying the metallic gauze dips onto roads and into the river; the trucks have stopped. By day six the stores are looted clean; there’s no water but the green gunk in neighborhood pools, in hot tubs, maybe a few gallons going for hundreds each. You get to the river to trade for everything you’ve got. Gun shots ring through the net causing it to sing and scream spasmodically.
You stay inside with your family, eeking out the last beans and rice, the last tortillas rolled and cooked on a campstove. No one knows what to do; day six the bombs start. Whole blocks are torn to shreds. The families with children have been in the school cafeterias—the doors guarded by crazed parents with assault weapons. The hospitals are getting leveled one by one; you can see them from the roof: Presbyterian, the old Saint Joe’s. You hear that two schools nearby have been bombed. You know some kids who were in them. The churches are turning people away; the synagogues are on fire; the mosques barricaded. Those without farm animals are getting very hungry; someone shoots your dog in front of you and carries it away. You don’t protest because she said she’d kill your grand-kids if you did. The net is uncuttable. Walking is impossible. Overhead a plane flies incessantly trailing a banner which reads “Who cares?” Another one later spells out: “Very few, apparently.”
If you care, call your representatives immediately. Demand a cease to war everywhere and a repeal of the 30 billion dollar pledge to Israel of our tax dollars which funds terrorism and genocide.
Believe that peace is possible. (prose poem by Merimée Moffitt)
