New Poetry by Karen Neuberg

Days I’m a Hard Windshield

—after W.S. Merwin, Mary Chapin Carpenter

I feel lucky today
as though my reflection
will please me, as though the awful
events happening & happening
are not happening, as though I know
how to not go along with them.


COVID-19

This viral font of the fountain ceaselessly pouring into the spirit of us, onto the plains of us, across the prairies of us, into the dense (remaining) forests, along bridges and highways, through landmarks and spires, places of prayer, down urban streets, within playgrounds, onto soccer fields, and far into our days and nights. Continuation linked to an exponential growth formula as we stay inside the grip of its hold.

What the world will be like after 

There will be rubble and pillars of salt.
Some currently unknown, unimaginable
might crawl or bloom or explode
into the next creation.

There will be a circularity of time, infinity having
no human to calculate it. Math will exist,
waiting to be rediscovered if, in fact, math
remains a basic truth of the universe.

And the universe will continue filled
with the detritus of our explorations.
And the oceans will overflow the land.
And the cemeteries will be meaningless.

And the sun will shine in its pattern until
it, too, winks out, and is gone.


- © Karen Neuberg 2020

Karen Neuberg’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming Eratio Poetry Journal, Glassworks, Gone Lawn, Really System, and Unbroken. She is the author of PURSUIT (Kelsay Books, 2019) and the chapbook the elephants are asking (Glass Lyre Press, 2018). She lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY.