Anthony Borruso

The end is palpable, the end is near, the end

is here…and here and here and here.

Great-grandma had to fend

off demons until they stuck her in a sanitorium.

Every time she opened the icebox

frozen peas applied new advanced

interrogation techniques. They were

sickly green periods, coaxing

her sentence to closure. Death

I’m not so hung up on, it’s the after-

shave scent and the burning

of my cheeks. It’s the issue of who’s

to bequeath my worries to the next generation. 

I can’t seem to find a basement

big enough. Milk crates of mood disorders,

notebooks fat with doom-scrawled all-night

ravings, nine-volt batteries, Costco crates

of Cup O’ Noodles. When you start

stocking for the apocalypse it’s hard

to know when to stop, or on what lucky

ancestor your freeze-dried anxieties

will be foisted. How they will seize

the tongue unexpectedly and send them

spiraling to South Beach Psychiatric. The proctor

throws up his hands at my brazen side eye:

This is a genetic test! And haven’t you read

the fine print of your DNA? I know

and go on despite the knowing, I pour

one out for the sobbing commodore

and his wordy calamity. How I dreamed

of a cozy loony bin with the aquatic

quiet of Lowell’s McLean. The administrators

of my fate could not nix the noise

of their number-crunching. Everything,

too crowded and loud, all the fun myths

debunked. But despite this, you learn

to dampen the days as you pinch

them from their orange bottle. Poet

or not you admit you don’t make the rules,

you just swallow them.