Please Read Cass Donish (I'm not kidding)

 The End of Fair Weather 

by Cass Donish

I place a bundle of white feathers in a drawer.

I gather cloud slips to give to a lover.

This is among the last blue-sky days.

The continent will soon go full centigrade.

Each day in winter will be a mirror

through which one may step, overdressed,

into record-breaking summer.

It’s not useless to call out

the name of a moth just gone

extinct, just as it’s not useless to sing

in a dead language

while frying eggs to start the day.

As in, either it is or isn’t useless.

Who here is qualified to decide?

I see the larkspur vanishing.

I see my jeans threading to skin.

In a dream, a lover tells me to start

a panic journal. I say, I don’t want these things

written down. She sends me the ocean

in a black envelope.

I see myself opening it

on a pixelated screen. I see my name

beside the word executor.