Trapper Markelz

Trapper Markelz (he/him) writes from Arlington, Massachusetts. He is the author of the chapbook Childproof Sky, a Cherry Dress Chapbooks 2023 selection. His work has appeared in the journals Baltimore Review, Passengers Journal, Pine Row Press, Wild Roof Journal, The Dewdrop, and Poetry Online, among others. Learn more at trappermarkelz.com.

“The Moon Watches Us Come and Go,” “How My Dad Thinks the World Will End,” and “Recipe for Cake”

I’m not one to admire change. I’ve been here
for billions of years and will be for billions more,
and in the time it has taken me to draw a single breath,
you meat puppets went from pissing on the savanna
to whipping past my feldspar plains a dozen times

“My Mom Would Repeat to Herself Over and Over Again,” “I Think I’m Just Going to Go,” and “Life-Fighting Machines”

this too shall end.
This too shall end.
This too shall end—
from a place in the basement corner bedroom
beneath boarded-up windows in the back of the house
where she hid from the noise of an Alaskan summer solstice
of driftwood bleaching, refused to watch the harbor pier

“Glass Coffin” and “See You at the Air Down”

I’m not going to be famous,
but my kids might remember me.

Perhaps I’ll have the luck
to kiss a child and be forgotten,
a lingering creation left upon the earth,
consumed by a mad dash to replace us all.