The Sandy Next Time

As the water rose 

to occupy Wall Street, 

ten thousand helicopters 

flew massed dollars out 

lest all that cabbage salt to slaw 

and the balance of payments 

blow out to sea. 

 

Merrill Lynch’s bull 

splashed its massive chiseled hooves 

in feral panic 

at going underwater 

like all the homes 

it had helped foreclose. 

 

Liberty Tower, 

floated off across the Atlantic, 

all 1,776 feet of it. 

It was last seen from a flood-fleeing yacht, 

erect like Frankenstein’s kindred creation, 

adrift in the ever-rising sea, 

 

while high-flying drones 

lassoed bales of stampeding stock certificates 

lest any bankers lose their cents 

once and for all, 

 

and armed battalions arrested 

everyone

who lacked a trust fund 

and tried to flee.

 

“The Sandy Next Time,” Syndic No. 12, February 2015. . Reprinted Heated Words on a Heating World: Poems for a Future. Central Jersey Coalition against Endless War. 2019.