Natalie Marino
American Apocalypse
Like the almost-end
of an old Western
a barn alights with fire
but something
has mutated.
Someone
unlatches a door.
Horses run
with abandon
to the peach trees
in a field pink
with mist,
but they won’t
be coming back;
no one
will be riding off
to the horizon.
Smoke batters
the darkening sky.
Ribbons of cabbage
are far away,
safe only
for awhile longer.
Without a single ranger
all the characters
in this movie are losers.
The farmhouse’s front
yard is without an inch
of new green growing in,
its lonely living room
empty except for the electric
blue of a television left on.
Natalie Marino is a poet and practicing physician. Her work appears in Hayden Ferry’s Review, Little Patuxent Review, Pleiades, Salt Hill, wildness and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook Under Memories of Stars (Finishing Line Press, 2023). She lives in California. You can find her online at nataliemarino.com or on Instagram @natalie_marino.
Banner Art:
from The True American, Enoch Wood Perry, 1874
