Contributor: Elizabeth Morton

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when the world ends it will be a weekend.
four Clydesdales will trudge through the supermarket.
but the women will be buying celery and ham hocks and deodorants like they always do, and nobody will notice the burning bush by the sardines or the plague of locusts chattering by the ceiling fans.

when the world ends our cardboard palaces that periodically break down will be prised open.
and us, hunkered by wicker furniture and houseplants.
our skylights peeled back.
cockroaches will make love like they always do.
and the sky will smell like marmite.

the city's flood plains will be slick with neopolitan oils, cigarette ends, paper napkins.

and the wave on the horizon will be friendly as a shadow.

and the skyscrapers will wait
upon the breaker like bone.


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Elizabeth Morton is a writer and sometime student from New Zealand. In her free time she collects obscure words in supermarket bags. She has been published in Poetry NZ, Blackmail Press, JAAM, Shot Glass Journal and Takahe magazine.