By Craig Bernardini

If I had a choice
between being wrong
and the world dying—
you know, the oceans
turning into lemon juice, the air
to Lysol, the forests
cinder, tundra
swamp, shipping lanes
jammed with dead
polar bears, Manhattan
a gondola, the world,
a Gondwana of dengue—
I would, of course, choose
the latter.
And maybe, just maybe,
clinging to the last
antenna of the last
skyscraper to be swallowed
by the waves, pointing
my big fat finger
at the dead world,
and at all the mother-
fuckers who did it,
shouting, Told you so,
Told you so—maybe,
as the water was closing
over my mouth, I’d understand
how we got into this mess
in the first place.

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Craig Bernardini’s fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in recent issues of Atticus Review, DIAGRAM, and The Gettysburg Review. He teaches English at Hostos Community College, a City University of New York school in the Bronx, and blogs about music at Helldriver’s Pit Stop, on the CUNY Academic Commons. There are twice as many quadrupeds as bipeds in his house; together, they outnumber the chickens by one.

Illustration by Courtney Bennett.