The People’s Season (Alix Perry)

And spring, being the people’s

season, awakens on the shoulders

of an abandoned liquor store.

The pessimists’ mundane shame

pendulums from strip mall to

fenced lot, all in good time.

A wedding band writes the

apocalypse’s pop hook on a

ukulele with three broken strings

while security cries shut up.

I awaken each night to count

still-ten toes. My midnight snack

sugar cookies stink of sourdough.

All our lies are for the children—

so we are taught to suppose.

Don’t forget those golden years,

gorging on gongs and honing

cyanide smiles. As now, we carry 

strangers’ anchors upstream until

we lose them. The silence

of our mercy, we lose them.

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Alix Perry is a trans writer living in Western Oregon. Their work has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and can be found in Kissing Dynamite, Rogue Agent, Defunkt Magazine, and elsewhere. Find out more on Instagram and Twitter @_AlixPerry_ and at alixperrywriting.com. 

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image: MM Kaufman