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.