Tired from fighting the end
of the world, we surround

a glass platform. High heels
clatter, pavonine skirts flutter,

then a thunder of applause.
All eyes fixed on the turquoise

velvet of the curtains, but I watch
your pale hands, still sooty

from the wildfire of last night.
With the taste of ash in our mouths,

and a rich smell of licorice, we drink
green fairy though all fairies

of the forest are dead now.
We couldn’t save the peacock

from the hungry mouth of the fire,
we won’t forget how it looked

like a firework on the amber asphalt.

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Özge Lena is an internationally published poet whose work appears in The London Magazine, The Oxford Blue, Mslexia, The International Times, and numerous magazines and anthologies across continents. She is the author of the monthly Extinction Column for the Oxford Climate Society blog. She recently presented her poetic approach, “Catapoetics: Poetry of the Catastrophe,” at the International Conference on Poetry Studies, Birkbeck, University of London. Her poetry has received the Pushcart Prize, Editor’s Choice Award, The Best Spiritual Literature Award, and Best of the Net nominations, and was shortlisted for the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition, The Plough Poetry Prize, Ralph Angel Poetry Prize, and the Black Cat Poetry Press Nature Prize.