when  the  cities lie at the monster’s feet there
are left  the mountains.
–  Robinson Jeffers, Shine, Perishing Republic

It’s eleven p.m., Tokyo is in tatters
all our efforts in vain but you know what
the hell with it, Tokyo’s not even

worth a mass, not in its current condition,
buildings disassembled, trains askew,
the unfleshed candlesticks of power towers

dangling and befuddled like Harpo’s antic
malevolence, a shambles of seaweed:
Groucho’s had too much to drink. Calm yourselves,

we’ve got our own expense of oxygen
and it throbs a steady rhythm
even as we tremble, stumbling through the same

atmosphere we’ve shared with Godzilla,
tiger, dragon, prince of the towers,
bare skin gone to bone or deep within

where such beauty comes from, asleep
with those principles, as if we had time to spare,
that slip with grace past this apocalypse
we, only now, in this ruinous moment, share.

Bruce Robinson last appeared in Panoplyzine in 2018. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Mobius, Pangyrus, Spectrum, The Menteur, Common Ground, Connecticut River Review, and The Maynard. ‘And still there are harps and whippets on the castled and pit-headed hills.’

For last week’s Editors’ Choice, please visit: Finches Prefer Chopin – Raymond Byrnes