Poetry Contest Runner-Up
Sci-fi Aubade
Say God breaks his covenant
and floods return Manhattan to the deep
where future fisherman dive for pearls.
Say a diver blacks out from the pressure,
rises like a dark flare sent against the storm,
and surfaces, blooming on the heavy waves.
To the creatures below, he’ll sleepily wave
his arms like tendrils, like a hungry, beckoning thing
that survived the flood to become predator
of the silky blue, a latter-day monster
singing down nightly from this balcony in the sky,
begging, Please, wend this way
and sway to silent songs that promise feasts
to come. But the diver, not knowing
this is what he is saying, is still and dreaming:
A woman opens beside him like a new testament
and rests her head against his and whispers
what he’ll spend so many mornings trying to remember.