The Zoetropes Of The End Of The World Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Caladium is a name for a flower with ears
Big enough to fly,
Around the footstalls of houses where the amphibians
Ululate until they are picked off like canaries for
Singing too loudly for housecats:
And then it rains, and the housewives disrobe themselves
In the familiar grottos of their carports;
And they change there vespers in the washing machines,
And are stung barefooted by open electricity chords,
While the angels of their young boys are lisping open
Mouthed with the yellow jackets battened down
In the impulsive orchards,
While even the kidnappers stop to sleep along the gurgling
Drainage taking all of the toy boats of the tallest boys
To the gulf stream and thus off away
Or finally to the Gulf of Mexico, with streams attributing
To the candelabrums gushing sunlight’s perfidy
Down from the sky; while inside the sparest living rooms
Nearest to the sparsest Christmas trees,
The oldest and least luxurious of black and white cartoons
Plays and plays in coyly feral snouts
That her children imagine wait for them beyond the
echinopsis whose red bulbs decorate the rock garden,
And flickerings of the slashing forest and tangling dunes
Denote the zoetropes of the end of their world.