Forty five dollars of regular unleaded.
My gas tank is a graveyard on fire.
Most every species that once drew breath
is fossil now, or oil. If I’m to die
in this latest Apocalypse, what would my body
ignite? Whose escape could I fuel?

Wyoming, too, is an unmarked grave
and the wind shears off an inch
each year to flash the bones of another
failure felled by the hard hand of cataclysm.
All my escape routes are paved
on the backs of a billion extinctions.

As the Cretaceous closed,
did You gather Your children
in a field to graze while You scooped
in Your two open palms, the width
of continents, a handful of celestial stones
to scatter like snowflakes upon their gaping
mouths?

Or did You close one eye
and aim?

*Originally published in New Millennium Writings.

Armin Tolentino received his MFA at Rutgers University in Newark, NJ.  His poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Arsenic Lobster, Hyphen Magazine, and The Raven Chronicles.  His first full length collection, We Meant to Bring It Home Alive, is forthcoming from Alternating Current Press.  He is a former Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship recipient and hopes one day to earn a Guinness Record for world’s loudest clap.

Photograph by The Korus.