poetry
A Prayer for the Surviving
by Marisca Pichette in Issue Nine, June 2023
The atmosphere is breaking.
A puddle stands in the
middle of the street, reflecting
all our cracked
and rotting dreams.
Two bubbles, slick and oily.
Two men watch
One building folds in on itself
a collapsing ampersand,
frog base
Its last breath is red brick dust.
Grey suit One. Yellow tie Two.
Both are balding, both are giving up.
between their feet, the road cracks
and flakes away
a cheap manicure
(an expensive earthquake).
First street Empty
Favorite dies in a pile of onion skins.
We all peel
away from ourselves
in oil
and tears.
Yesterday the clouds were in the sky.
Today he’s on the ground, collecting
the pieces of a pair of broken
glasses.
Chips break
skin, but she scratched
out the corners of his lungs
already.
A puddle of cooling machine oil accepts
his blood.
Rogue brick escapes the tangles
of his tumbling house,
catches a man in the
inner
ear.
Fragile globe shatters, spewing grey across a fallen sky.
One bubble remains.
© 2023 Marisca Pichette
Marisca Pichette
Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Massachusetts. She has published more than three hundred pieces of short fiction and poetry, appearing in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, The Deadlands, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fantasy Magazine, Asimov's, Nightmare Magazine, and many others. Her poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, was a finalist for the Bram Stoker and Elgin Awards. Their eco-horror novella, Every Dark Cloud, is out now from Ghost Orchid Press.