NEW! Poem by Kyle McCord

Kyle McCord

If you’re reading this,
I forgive you for eating me first.
Then Hector, our Mayan tour guide,
who doubtlessly ascended
the tree of wisdom
next to the fern of unwise disrobing
in public venues. 
Then at least four members
of the archeology club
while those scrappy kids
obediently translated
the sarcophagus’s inscription:
Please visit the gift shop
on your way out, vile desecrators.
I toot my rustic horn in approval. 
If you’re reading this,
beware Bachelor #1
whose love of long walks on sandy beaches
doesn’t survive the second date. 
Then the children come out of cryo
like greyhounds bounding
onto an orbital platform.
Bachelor #2,
the fleshless beast of nightmares,
shares your affection
for early Will Smith cinema
and couch surfing at polar research stations. 
When the wind rushes over his billboard empire
he secretes a sort of melancholy.
Rest assured, the SWAT teams
have him surrounded.
As for my effects,
buried beneath our makeshift mackerel factory,
you’ll find an alarmingly detailed biography
of Boris Kasparov
and a pictorial history of our years
as star-gazing antlers.
Scatter my leftovers
on the snow-drifted sea
where we birthed our young
and each day raised them
to be the most well-preserved ziggurats
ever to grace the stage.