Poetry

On an island far away

by Lisa Süß

On an island
far away
cliffs fall
          into the sea
          with the kind of
                    beauty that’s hard to
                    cope with when you’re an
                                                                      atheist.

The only development are condos
etched into the walls
by rabbits.

Every summer puffins move in
after a winter at sea.
Do the birds force out the rabbits with their red beaks?
Or are the rabbits renting out their units?
Charging extra for burrows with a view
                    of confetti bombs
                    exploding
                    from the rock –
          thousands of gannets, white birds with
          black wingtips like soft ice cream
          dipped into chocolate.

While I contemplate whether the rabbits are slumlords
or victims of seasonal gentrification,
I open a muesli bar:
dark chocolate,
macadamia,
cranberry.

I marvel at the beauty and decadence involved in
farming,
harvesting,
assembling
those ingredients
just so a girl can pick up a package of four
snack-sized bars for 2 pounds 40 at the supermarket and eat one
on the edge
of a windswept cliff.

I carefully put the plastic wrapper
into my pocket.
          100 miles off this coast an
          oil rig extracts
          black gold from the
          ocean floor.

I walk along the cliff,
the ground like a trampoline.

A man walks by with a Tesco bag,
nods, “You all right?”
without expecting an answer.
If I had said no,
would he have opened his Tesco bag and
          fed me Walkers crisps like a
          modern-day elf
          appearing to lost wanderers?

I tally the number of puffins I spotted today.
9.
A coping mechanism of our time

                              deprived of
                                        gods
                              and
                                        elves.

Counting.
Quantifying.
Organising the world into
                                        snack
                                                  sized
                                                            plastic
                                                                      packages.

Appeared in Issue Fall '19