Annihilation
"Red Sea" painting by JoAnneh Nagler
by Olivia Calderón
The earth is salted
with the tears of giants
and now only dead things grow.
The seasons change around them.
Frost, leaves, thawing, they
never moved. Not an inch.
But something changed.
Because the crops reek of rot,
the soil is boiling blue, and there’s
mold creeping through husks of husks.
They said there was no other option.
They said they were grieving and sorry.
They said it would all be over soon.
We didn’t say anything back.
Olivia Calderón is Cuban American poet based in Edinburgh. Her work has appeared in Gutter, Interpret, Transients Magazine, and various local anthologies. In 2023, she graduated with an MSc in Creative Writing and was shortlisted for the Grierson Verse Prize. She is the managing editor for Outcrop Poetry, and published her debut zine, 'Florida Woman' this past September.
JoAnneh Nagler is the author of Stay with Me, Wisconsin (Coyote Point Press), Naked Marriage (Skyhorse Publishing); How to Be an Artist Without Losing Your Mind, Your Shirt, or Your Creative Compass (W.W. Norton); and The Debt-Free Spending Plan (HarperCollins), two of which were Amazon Top-100 titles. Her books have been featured in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, The Huffington Post, Essence Magazine, Medium.com, etc., as well as many journals, including New Haven Review, The Brussels Review, Persephone, Glimmer Train and more. She is a reader for Ploughshares, and her work has been supported by The Bread Loaf Writers Conference and Stanford University’s Creative Writing Program. www.AnArtistryLife.com.
