How to Survive a Plague

by Christopher Costello

 

Every urn is always a grenade.
Let this one not explode in your hand.
All our bodies are already acts of war,
so drop yours from a goddamn airplane
before the enemy does. Take up space.
Glitter the streets with broken glass
diamonds, dance yourself sick in the fog
machine tear gas of Saturday night.

Become a forest of angry
fists and clasped hands. Stomp on
restaurant tables. Repeat yourself
like gunfire. Pull your own trigger
warning: you are a story
of something broken, but ‘
every body is made of blood
stained glass and cracks
under the pressure,
spiderwebbing out past
the horizon. The new future
is already here: palaces of bone
and brick, a halo of sirens
over every city street.

 

 


Chris Costello is a writer, editor, and educator from Central New York. His poems have appeared in Paintbucket, Rise Up Review, and Nine Mile Magazine, among others. He is interested in queerness, spacetime, and identity construction.

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