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raise up your name in lights
in plastic fire
named across highways where
vans & buses slip cut-off
near collision or
Seven died today
staring at your name
customers eternal
continue market plan
devoured our enemies
and then began to die
Headaches were the first to go
public symptoms in our tribe
were not tribes
until Waste set in
sending sands untended streets
and gutters filled with acids strips of meat
liquid on torn edges
quarter to digestion ' quarter to rotten
set off symptoms ' made it hard
to see who'd been infected could infect
fled our steel & glass
in companies termed pure
(last use of technology
to prick & test
until we had to hunt
and then begin to die
bears must have eaten
our spoiled kind
deer the bled-on grass
these crystals to congeal
in six-point feathers from sky require
something to cling to
to be called beautiful by you
and their most active nuclei
spot leaves brown & halo blight
us who live where you planted us
and your biggest problem
is whether to drive
Elizabeth Kate Switaj has two books of poetry forthcoming: How to Drink a Floral Moon from Blue Lion Books and Magdalene and the Mermaids from Paper Kite Press. Her chapbook, The Broken Sanctuary: Nature Poems, is currently available from Ypolita Press. When not writing, she teaches English at Shengda College of Zhengzhou University in rural China and edits Crossing Rivers Into Twilight. Check out ElizabethKateSwitaj.net.