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Civil Defence Plan #62
Change your status
to molten rock. Be a deluge
of lava, a cascade of magma
a red-hot tide.
Donate the scoria to charity.
Post pics of the new-born
landscape, the banquet table
you have covered in candles.
For a healthy wick, let a new candle burn
at least two hours. Ensure an even melt.
Get waxed. Wow your friends
with smoothness.
Take the train to the aviary, but leave
your bodyguards at the station. In the café
do not order the quail.
Build a coop for when the rent is due.
Tend the eggs and let one hatch
into a winner. ‘Like’ the rosettes
on rival roosting boxes.
Euthanise the dog before her bones turn cutlass.
Unfriend the trolls. Use <3
with valour or not at all.
If you must, stash your secrets in a vault
behind the family portraits. Air them
on Queen’s Birthday and check the smoke detectors.
Ascend the stairs in ever decreasing measures.
As you fall, drop a seedling
on every step. Find happiness
in the orchard.
Soak in the fruit as long as you dare.
Flambé and serve.
Sandi Sartorelli is a graduate of the Whitireia Creative Writing Programme. She has recently returned home to New Zealand after a year in the Cook Islands. She is an optimist and hopes the food in her poems and short stories rouses memories of your most pleasurable or most ghastly eating experiences. Her website is Sandi Sartorelli – Poetry and Writing
