Greenland, by Cecille Marcato

Jesus is my Airplane, by Sister Gertrude Morgan (USA) c. 1970

​Greenland
                    
We live now in the red building
we built ourselves.
We live in the red building
with its tick-tick-ticking.
Our building that we built ourselves
is next to but apart from
white buildings we built ourselves
but no longer live in. Gutted ruins – 
copper waterpipes 
pilfered, toilets jammed with shit,
Styrofoam, radioactive rats 
all of which we made ourselves.
We used them until they no longer
served, the white buildings 
we built ourselves, until we 
were obliged to move on.
Dressed as missionaries we
crowd together in our one red building 
or line up along our over-watered lawns
 
to wait for Jesus in His airplane, 
its tailfin a cross;
wait for Him to save us, one 
by one. Inside the last building 
we built ourselves as the hourglass 
of days empties, we wait
for triage, for a seat 
on His flight bound for Greenland, 
a blank sheet of melting ice in a warming
sea of blue.  Greenland:  
all white & ready for us to build on.

Cecille Marcato

 Cecille Marcato (she/her) is a poet and cartoonist in Austin.  Her work has appeared or is upcoming in Leon, South Florida Poetry Journal, Free State Review, Naugatuck River Review, Husk, Solstice, and Slipstream. She holds degrees in literature and design and graduated from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.