When arsenic dust clouds lick
neighborhoods from salt lake
beds gone dry.

When coral reefs surrender
their rainbows and we prepare
our farewells to big ice.

When blarings and blindings assault
silence and darkness that nourishes
others to mate, migrate, elude.

When like hurricanes, our heat waves
get nicknames and evasive creeps in
where extinct once thrived.

Stern angels will grumble as we
bungle heavy with paralysis and
dirge, and then just get on with it,
returning to our tiny this and that.

Rikki Santer’s poems have appeared in various publications including Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, Heavy Feather Review, Slab, Slipstream, [PANK], Crab Orchard Review, RHINO, Grimm, Hotel Amerika and The Main Street Rag. Rikki Santer’s work has received many honors including six Pushcart and three Ohioana and Ohio Poet book award nominations as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Rikki’s eleventh poetry collection, Stopover, which is in conversation with the original Twilight Zone series was recently published by Luchador Press.