127: Big Finish
127: Big Finish
Big Finish
by Kimberly Johnson
Read the automated transcript.
Now that the last shaft of sunset has collapsed
into that rubble of cloud, let’s dust off
and see how bright the stars are, the disclosed
vault spinning like a discoball been drilled
smack into Polaris. My oracle’s
a bullhorn for the endtimes, portending
wars and rumors of wars in the stars’ course
headlong through the heavens. And even though
the astrophysicists as in chorus
to the oracle declare that all this sparkle,
every spectacular atom of it,
is a death, the expired light of bodies
that have burned themselves down to nothing,
yet they are so bright, and shimmery,
and to shimmy seems their light to me,
sequins tilting into a spotlight.
Don’t they move like jubilation on their wheel?
And don’t they flash with brash abandon?
And if finally they should quit their spheres
and fall upon us, their apocalypse
will surely seem a shower not of wormwood
but confetti, gleeful streaking
down the sackcloth dark to pronounce our doom
a wop bop a loo-bop, a wop-bam-boom.
"Big Finish," from UNCOMMON PRAYER by Kimberly Johnson. Copyright © 2014 by Kimberly Johnson. Used by permission of Persea Books.