After the War by Ryan Croken
Associate poetry editor Jacqueline Boucher on today's bonus poem: "After the War" is simultaneously vast and intimate. The poem's transition into big questions makes me feel hopeless down to my guts, helped along by clipped lines. It’s a strange, evocative poem with strange, evocative words.
After the War
The mosquitoes have grown
Radioactive and they crawl about the red sky
Clawing at clouds and they die
And they wake up from their deaths
As if from a dream—they can’t die
They just fly about all green
And terrible with their
Nuclear moanings.
Yesterday I tried to kill a mosquito
But I could not kill it—
It just moaned
As I slapped it
And then it flew away
Like a light
That wants to go back
To its star.
What are we supposed to do
With an immortal
Mosquito
In this world?
What are we supposed to do
With a mosquito
That can turn to us And say
Are you the gods?
Is this the flood?
Why has the land
Turned barren
And strange?
Why have my people
Turned barren and strange?
Ryan Croken is a freelance writer and editor living in Chicago. His poetry has appeared in La Petite Zine, Word Riot, nthposition, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
