Psalm acrostic after the very last day

Abstract

Psalm acrostic after the very last day Josh Myers (bio) In one city the cops only shot stray dogs, in another posses went door-to-door saying give up yourmutts or we'll take them. Pyre on the basketball court, pyre in the parking lot outside the Whole Foods.Of course, people kept getting sick. The fridgeunder the Pentecostal church was full of copperheads,rattlesnakes, grape juice, wafers nobody was left toeat. Out west, the wolves outnumbered trees—deer fled into the ghost towns, rapped their hooves on the tornado shelter's doors where they lay flushunder a scattering of red dust. People grewtaciturn, always looking down, like they'd held so long onto an old crowbar, trying to pry a casket openin a funeral home, that rust rubbed into their splitknuckles and left them lockjawed. You tryexplaining with only your two raw hands what you heard when the wake ended and it was just youand the body. You'd give up, too. In one citythe seawall wasn't tall enough. In one monthevery dollar tore itself in half. Here the dead smokereared up like an animal and lashed out at our masks. [End Page 185] Josh Myers Josh Myers is from Heidelberg, Germany. Recent poems of his have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Gulf Coast, Image, and Iron Horse Literary Review. He got his MFA from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, and he currently lives in Philadelphia with his wife and dog. Copyright © 2022 Pleiades and Pleiades Press