Trails

by Romain P. A. Delpeuch (October 2023)

The Mysterious Stranger, Gertrude Abercrombie, 1953

Above us pawns, a chessboard in the sky.
Who’s playing it, deciding who will die
to keep afloat the seats of kings and queens?
“It’s climate change,” they scream from all our screens,
“so know that you’re to blame. You kill the earth!
To make amends, you ought to live in dearth.”
That’s all I’ve ever done—and from my birth—
and I renounced all promises of mirth.
Go, masters, soar in heavens high. Beneath,
we’ll make it by the skin of our last teeth,
for all your efforts to obliterate
our dust and cinders are the hand of fate.
The only sinners left will have to bear
your burden of iniquity, a share
too heavy for your shoulders frail. Goodbye.

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Romain P. A. Delpeuch is the author of Hypnagogia (Terror House Press, 2023). His poetry and short fiction appear in New English Review, Terror House Magazine, Apocalypse Confidential, Ekstasis, D.F.L. Lit, JOURN-E (vol. 1, no. 2), Atop The Cliffs and The Decadent Review.

Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast