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| The Gjallerhorn. Image source: Swide |
I waited for the Viking apocalypse,
nursing a cup of hot chocolate,
like it was mead, thick with brewing,
reading Beowulf, looking at the moon set
in the western sky, wondering if the young boy
with the hoodie pulled up and dark circles under
his eyes, walking past my window
on this milder day, after a winter that feels
like it was eleven years long, is the wolf son
of Loki, escaped and battling for the last hundred
days. I’m thinking I could go outside and pull
bark from the tree, scratch on it some
Viking graffiti that says, “kiss me,” the scent of
alpine clover in the air,
and return into my lair, take up my mead/hot chocolate
burrow under the blankets again,
waiting for the world to fall into the sea,
waiting to dream of Valhalla, laid in state
on my bed, a proper Viking funeral.
Jennifer Lemming’s works have appeared in Tipton Poetry Review, Earth’s Daughters, Ichabod’s Sketchbook, Out Rider Press Anthologies, Foothills Press Anthology, Rufous Press, The Idiom Magazine, and The Poetry Garden. Jennifer was a Finalist in February 2011 for the “Poems for Mr. Lincoln” contest sponsored by Brick Street Poetry. In the San Francisco based poetry contest, The Dancing Poetry Festival, she won first place for her poetry in 2004 and third place in 2009. In 2012 her latest chapbook The Clever Level was published by Celestial Panther Press.