This is another preview poem to be featured in our first issue, the theme of which is Existence As the End. This is meant as a beckoning, a welcoming, a calling forth to those souls who find themselves at a crossroads amid these strange times—dystopian times, some might call them. But this does not concern the world’s end, but rather how we are ends—in and of ourselves, strengthened by the wonder of utopian possibility that The New Rhythm Zine aims to envision. Hope is the thing with feathers, and we are all birds here.
I would lie next to you on a patch of deadened grass under the setting dystopian sun, full of good, sweet things: dandelion wine, the bliss of human touch, the burning ultraviolet dusk. I would lie next to you at the edge of the world where the sun is perpetually set and the grass never withers, where dreams and miracles are realized with every intake of breath. We have always held magic inside us, even as the world turns toward its end: an empty canteen, cracked lips, the smell of decay and hopelessness. No, there is always hope— in the light of the night’s stars and the blessed moon there shines the reflection of us: the persistent, resilient facticity of existence.