Nels Hanson’s most recent poem to appear here was “Tour” (January 2018)

The Fall
By Nels Hanson

As the young lips and tongue, now
slight pressure of bright teeth bring
the President to crisis thrown away

in rumpled tissue in the Oval Office
his decent second in command loses
easy race, doomed Iraq explodes in

jets of flame, million dead, millions
starving refugees, virgin girls forced
into prostitution, the whole Mid-East

erupting. Strange an act of say five
minutes or so drowned Asia Minor
in a lake of fire. Billy bit the apple

ten-thousandth time but this bite
went deep as darkest ocean where
Earth’s plates collide and scrape

and vast fathoms higher our world
shook, everywhere sky rained red
after the slack phallus bent in rest.