Jeremiah Moriarty

Selfie with America as Complicated Hollow, Year 2036

I did not want to tell my future son about this.
I did not want to walk this way and that,
under a ruined archway, a sinking roofline,
into the ashy sanctum of the past, ringed
in dust. Future son asks me then, just behind
me, what is it you have seen? Steps forward.
What is it you all did? I bend down, crouching
low, never divorcing my eyes from the vaguely
ensorcelled thing there, the phenomenally
sad hole in the floor, a creche of new silences,

where air bloomed, orange and red and noisy.
What is it you all did? I stand up, looking
at his youngish face, and I do not know
what exactly to say; everything still feels
orange and red and noisy.

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Jeremiah Moriarty‘s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue, NightBlock, The Cortland Review, Tammy, the Ploughshares blog, Wildness, and elsewhere. He lives in Minneapolis and tweets @miahmoriarty.