Transformable Prophecy from Issue 19
When the world ends
a great spider will rise like a gray cloud
above it.
She will rise and swell, rise and swell
until she covers green earth, brown rock,
and blue water.
She will seize Creation inside herself
when the world ends
in the last days between the fire and the cold
the ones left will gather tins to beat into shelter
and weeds to eat with decaying mouths
like women in south african bantustans.
They will love what they have gathered among ghosts
and heaped into a place.
The coffee can over smouldering ashes
will hold stone soup.
A thousand species of decay will be born
when the Great Spider squats Creation back down.
A thousand demi-species of spiders
will flourish like flowers walking through
the burning ash, the hot, hot dust.
Crickets will break out of their cages
and tremble down the sky like rain,
twitching on the ground, while the sky turns cold.
The ones left will gather sick skin around bones,
sit in fires that smoulder in the earth.
Myriad-legged creatures will scramble through
scorching dust,
legs on fire, writing writing prayers God knew
when earth first smouldered, squalled
and begged to be born.