"Radiant Baby" by Sean Hanrahan

Joy can survive climate change. Radioactive baby crawling on all fours. So full of movement and color. Half the animals are gone, but baby finds other creatures to play with. Their gills are on the outside, their eyes haunting and heterochromatic. Their skin glows, too. Sharp, variegated ecstasy. Exuberantly fat lines aglow with graffiti ethos. Taking the world as it comes, not as it ought to be. Radiant Baby, sainthood may be possible, and if it is, bless this unholy poet who looks around the disappearing world and finds only despair and not beauty in the orange- yellow-red pollution moon. You do not even cry, baby, just burble in comic sans. You just climb towards nuclear proliferation chanting dada, dada. You grant us serenity on the subway. You model for us commercialized innocence. We buy you, our joy. We buy you, our hope. We smile at your innocent determination. A cave painting for the end times, depicting a Neanderthal dreamscape — a pictograph that will survive the inevitable collapse—but beautifully, a chunky butterfly kick away from annihilation, a stroke towards JOY! ————————————– Sean Hanrahan called us from Philadelphia, PA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems