DAVID BARRICK
Shin Godzilla (2016)
For David Ly
thrashes
across my laptop screen,
keeling like an oil tanker
off Tokyo Bay
and growing, growing
thick gristle, smoked meat gills
leaking, washing highways—
tires bursting in a low boil
of blood.
It pains me to see
his pain emanating
in this petrochemical flood,
igniting from all pores, atomic
mirror ball dicing fighter jets,
bisecting skyscrapers.
For every crisis
there is a board meeting.
Folded hands, fine suits,
appalled faces. This is how
it must have felt to watch
his immolations in 1954 how it feels
to doom scroll
endless unequal and opposite
reactions. The feed is feverish
these days—chaotic
ballet cascading
beyond my window frame
I wish to slow it
down to sleep, to freeze
this mitosis
at the tip
of whatever is coming next
DAVID BARRICK
is the author of the poetry collection Nightlight (Palimpsest Press, 2022) as well as two chapbooks. His poems have been published in Grain, Best Canadian Poetry 2024, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Arc Poetry, and other literary journals. He is the managing director of the Antler River Poetry reading series and teaches writing at Western University in London, Ontario.