The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Love Songs from the End of the World by Katherine Riegel

This selection, chosen by Guest Curator Erika Eckart, is from Love Songs from the End of the World by Katherine Riegel, released by The Mainstreet Rag in 2019.

Understand

When a kingfisher dies, I fall
into dark water, my feathered heart
dwindling down to ash; and part of me
wants to burn down
the human world until every
last one of us is dead
so the animals
can be safe at last.
Who am I
to rage so, when I am
also the hunter
carrying, somewhere
in his body,
a furred thing, cowering?
Oh, my fellow criminals,
let it be the end
of this play. Let’s take off our human suits
and scamper off on our paws
before the songless morning comes.

Katherine Riegel is the author of Love Songs from the End of the World, Letters to Colin Firth (Sundress Chapbook Prize Winner 2015), and two more books of poetry. Her work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Offing, Poets.org, and elsewhere. She is co-founder and managing editor of Sweet Lit, and teaches independent online classes in poetry and creative nonfiction. Find her at katherineriegel.com.

Erika Eckart is the author of the tyranny of heirlooms, a chapbook of interconnected prose poems (Sundress Publications, 2018). Her writing has appeared in Double Room, Agni, Quarter After Eight, Quick Fiction, Nano Fiction, Quiditty, and elsewhere. She is a High School English Teacher in Oak Park, IL where she lives with her husband and two children.