Unleashed
After “The Second Coming,” by William Butler Yeats
Everyone scrolls phones,
wears a mask, a camouflage.
Teens store weapons under car seats.
Militias distribute pistols to teachers.
Bombs fly, shrapnel spins.
Rag tag armies fight one-time friends.
Flagpoles are tipped with spears. Gallows erected.
There is a change in the atmosphere.
Days of extreme heat triple,
beget infestation, plague.
Worms drop from trees like paint from a brush.
Insecticide drips from leaves.
Feet stick to bug-covered sidewalks. Forests burn.
A new pestilence, carried by insects,
has been unleashed.
Ticks, long-horned, lone star and gulf coast,
advance to suburban yards,
transport encephalitis, meningitis,
relapsing fevers, anaplasmosis.
They creep forward in formation, attack en masse.
Impervious to pistols, glocks, AR15s,
they are a moving blanket of infection,
bleed cattle to death,
prepare to take down cowhands,
crawl now towards cars
as they make their morning commute.
Lao Rubert lives in Durham, North Carolina. Her poems have appeared – or will appear – in Atlanta Review, Barzakh, Collateral, Mom Egg Review, New Verse News, The Avenue, Wordpeace, Writers’ Resist and elsewhere. Rubert has spent a career working to reform the criminal justice system.
The Marbled Sigh 