There are people who lie awake at night
dreaming of how rich they’ll be
after an Armageddon, a world-wide plague
some global pandemic or war
in which their side wins.
These people dream of walking through the houses
of the wealthy dead, of pushing shopping carts
down the quiet hallways, filling bags
with priceless artifacts to take home
or simply moving their own meager belongings
into the waiting rooms of empty hospitals
the entranceways of empty castles.
Somehow, they think, that through vigilant prayer,
social isolation,
or random luck
they will be spared the ravages of disease
the falling bombs
the radioactive fallout
somehow, they’ll survive
and then we’ll be sorry.
Author Bio: Holly Day (hollylday.blogspot.com) has been a writing instructor at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review, and her newest full-length poetry collections are Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press), and Book of Beasts (Weasel Press).