Apocalypse Means Everyone Dies and We are Left: Two Poems and a Painting from Rachel Glaser and her Grandmother

Some tremendous art from the renowned poet, storyist, digital art guru, and filmmaker, Rachel Glaser. We're also touched to publish this painting of her grandmother's, Roslyn Hoffer Liberman. Some interesting Jewish "stuff" going on here.





your soul, barely

your soul was hidden with hair

had on it, a few proud moles

the witchdoctor believed to be normal

we were outside on a towel

my soul was lit up and obvious

yours, we determined, was obscured

unusual and unwilling

you were the pet falcon of an old woman

you were a child’s best trousers

do you like the drums?

you were a drunken songbird put in with owls

do you smell the odor of a garden?

did you tell your mother you felt ill?

you got tired of talking

and left the tavern

an arrow, you sped from the bow

and pierced the eyes of villagers

it was morning

the children cried

you called it an illusion

you called this world a phantom world

you were still sharp

no one could hug you without bleeding

you were friends with angels

and the angels got injured

you were not concerned

your eyes were hot

you would not relax

the Blinded cursed you

and the sound of your name

moved your body like a song

you stabbed eyes and crops and the bedding of your neighbors

you fell on the rooftop

and leaked

you were dead, but glumly went and got ready to die

the man at the cemetery pointed the way

but you didn't go

you couldn’t give up wanting to be famous

you worried about what you were going to eat

you wanted to buy an engraved belt

we grew tired of you

so you turned into a rare bird to awe us

you were trying to make money

you pranced and looked sick

you were wearing an engraved belt





My electric guitar got soft over time

here’s some romance (!)

go stuff your face

apocalypse means everyone dies and we are left

like when the football game stopped so we could 69

then the game resumed and your team had lost not so gracefully

football is cocky badasses in costume

basketball is the soul game of the body

you screwed my girlfriend

all my loose-leaf paper

my parents flipped out

my dog was disappointed

my rabbi bewitched a teenager

the teenager was hospitalized

the hospital was graffitied

my graffiti was scrubbed by city workers

my graffiti you can still see to this day

my girlfriend did you

and she does it really good

I’d be a badass if I didn’t feel so bad about my body

my family wasn’t dysfunctional

I was the only one

my guitar was blue and then it bled