The Underground Beach

apartments are crumbling in the explosions

like rotten tree stumps.

automobiles are burning like fluff from poplars.

silence swells

and the concrete bubbles implode.

fugitives are sitting, lying on mattresses, on sleeping mats

deep inside the subway.

the underground beach.

the waves are thumping outside.

no one wants to walk out into the vertical sea of death,

to wash their face, their eyes,

to dip into the city’s sky.

no way. the sickly lamptan is preferred.

each explosion carries someone’s life away—

the black stork that looks like a pterodactyl

greased with diesel fuel.