The Gods

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Time, fire, cages, secrets, dust. Poetry by Emily Rankin.

The Gods

Time has black hands; it
looms over the sinking world.

Whole planets, bound in fire—
No one’s going to prove the future or the past.

There’s a hurricane in the motel room.

We’re in a cage with no key and
we’re not going to find a way out.

Look down at your hands.
See the maze sneaking across the back of them.

There’s the big secret—
We all die once or twice, don’t we?

The apocalypse will come and come again,

And out of the dust, the old voices
sing the broken centuries.

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Emily Rankin was born in Riverside, California, and attended college in Texas, where she received a BFA in 2011. Her body of work deals with the tangles of human emotion and understanding, the intuitive messages of dreaming, and subconscious exploration. Her work has appeared in publications such as Wild Roof Journal, The Voices Project, Flare, and The Bluebird Word. She is currently based in New Mexico.


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