J.B. STONE

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

After Tomorrowland

a skyline resembling the wreckage
of fallen stars. citadels once paved
in bland beige / once built into the
image of asphalt and smog / now /
a dawn with a sun that still rises in
the aftermath. a new faith with an
educated following. a new world
where the meek finally inherit the
dreams their ancestors have long
since abandoned. even in the ashes
conjured by the fallout of insecure
men: life crawls out of the womb
of a war zone into a life worth
living. even upon the wreckage
the world finds a soundness one
can rest easy to.

What did the river tell you?

When its body overflowed
drowned the football fields
of harvest. The heartland
you broke your backs for.

The fields of hyacinth &
clover that once called
your valley a home //
now nothing more than

a flooded plain. Watered
down roots left to be some
thing else’s burden. Did the
river open the mouth in its

delta? Only to sing you a gospel
of sweet promises // only to
break them like dams wreathed
in dynamite // only to watch

you sink. Is the river’s hymn
only echoing what has been
sung to it for so long? A lyric
of lies stretched upon a once

fertile-now-damaged plain for
five millennia. Yet here we are
never learning // always laughing
watching our seas turn to dirt and

our forests decay to dust. We are
the gravediggers // we are the burial
of everything that could have been
                                           but never were.