Elegy with Cockroach King, and: Survival Biscuit

Despoilers all. Beetle, silverfish, moth, cockroach, cricket—

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But never bookworms, who do not care for the taste of paper.

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A tenth-century Koran from Herat,

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on which the scribe has, in the margins, composed a prayer

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imploring not Allah, but the Cockroach King:

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"Exalted One, I beseech you, preserve the most holy

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verses of this paper from Thy insatiable minions,

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who gorge, then scurry toward shadows." Ink, paper, pollen-y

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gold leaf. & now Mark Strand dwells among the shades,

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book pulled from the shelf. How the yellowed pages fluttered

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unglued to my study floor. Reasons for Moving: "There is no happiness

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like mine. / I have been eating poetry." Cover tattered,

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margin notes stupid in my college-boy hand. Ex Libris:

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D. C. Wojahn. Cockroach King, have pity on my brazen company:

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we seek only to outlive ourselves. Only, only, only.

Survival Biscuit

When the Muzak at Lowe's snarls out Elvis Costello as he awaits the end of        the world—& I pile A/C filters in my cart—I am first back slam dancing my way        through the wretched late '70s,but then back a decade farther, inching down the basement stairs,        the pile of space blankets

ashimmer in my arms, helping my mother provision the fallout shelter:        memory's ambush, memory'spalace coup. Under her arm, some pamphlets from Civil Defense.        She knows we each require 3.5 gallonsof water for an estimated two-week stay. She has baked & tinned 400        "survival biscuits" from a recipe

in Good Housekeeping: bulgur wheat, courtesy the single health food        store in Minneapolis. Campbell's Soup,chicken noodle & tomato, & Tang, the beverage of the astronauts.        Bunk bed, camp stove, redMotorola Bakelite transistor, my cache of comics: Flash, Green Lantern,        Peter Parker, morphed superhuman

through a radioactive spider bite. My father's on the road: Whitefish,        Duluth, or Winnipeg. We lie onthe bunks for practice, she with her Harlequins, me with Marvel & DC,        with "Superman's Mission for PresidentKennedy." For a snack it's Tang, survival biscuits on a paper plate,        slathered with honey to mask

the excremental taste. On the transistor, Johnny Cash understands        the zeitgeist, for he plummets down,down down down in a ring of fire, mariachi trumpets lavishing his fall.        In North Dakota & Wyoming, airmen slumber or play hearts in control rooms of missile silos & in        the Raven Rock bunker,

half the size of Manhattan, a mile deep, a cleaning woman vacuums        a postapocalyptic Oval Office,dusts the podium of the Senate Chamber. No Gog or Magog here,        no Darbyites or Millerites,no Jonestowners queuing up to their vats of black cherry Kool-Aid,        for we have been assured

this end of the world is mild, endurable, a flashbulb light after sirens sound;        so my father will come homein his Biscayne; a few weeks & the mailman will deliver Look & Newsweek        & Wildwood Elementarywill clean up rubble & reopen its doors. My mother will take the bottom bunk        & me the top. We will eat

like John Glenn on Friendship 7, Hershey's Syrup on survival biscuits        & our Tang shall not incineratein unspeakable light. & Lord, what did I know then of eschatology?        What did I know of ordinary heartbreak,of the end time's droning human scale? No manner of beast to slouch        toward a manger. Only my mother,

dying in an ambulance en route to the hospice, my father with a few last breaths,        after they had pulled the zippersof the O₂ tent away, Lynda's wipers cutting at sleet on 128, just before        the skid & the tree. Again & againI have written this. Again & again, the unimaginable unfolding.        The automatic doors of Lowe's

hiss open on the second morning of my sixty-fifth year. The parking lot        glints & throbs in August sun.Open the big package last, said the boys last night & yes, it was big & square        as a bread box, bedecked with

an absurdity of pink & purple ribbons, rattling faintly as I tore        the wrapping, a constellated

firmament of 6s & 5s, until the lettering squinted out: civil...