Parthian Shot Poem by gershon hepner

In LA, where the air is balmy,
we do not fear a great tsunami,
because we know the earth is hollow
beneath our feet, and though a swallow
to Capistrano will return
on March the twenty-first we’ll turn
to dust and ashes in the fault
of San Andreas. No salt
memorializes lives like Lot’s
dear wife, who looked around with hots
for those whom she had left behind
in Sodom and Gomorrah, blind
to moral faults far worse than those
that caused the earth to burn and close.

Quite surely we will be forgotten,
and men will say our lives were rotten,
but I will fire from my yacht,
my Noah’s Ark, a Parthian shot
at those who say: “I think he got
what he deserved! ” What utter rot
to moralize about the quakes,
tsunamis and the awful breaks
that here in Southern California
will happen, not because we’re hornier:
it’s all about tectonic plates,
and not what happens on your dates.


12/28/04,5/11/07