Apocalypse Mix

By Jane Satterfield

Jane Satterfield’s fourth poetry collection, Apocalypse Mix, dives into a musical, war-torn, elegiac past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Autumn House Press
• Release date: Jan 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781938769931

Book preview

I

You have to deal with it

Strummer, Jones, Simonon, Headon, Hate and War

These days everyone wants

      two acres gated with herbicide. Everyone wants

           to eat high on the food chain while—

Alice Fulton, The Permeable Past Tense Of Feel

Radio Clash

You’d have to travel back in time to find

the sound booth where we spun vinyl, blasting

tunes through dorms and dining halls, wave-

lengths of mild rebellion that never filtered

out beyond the campus gates to reach

the urban streets. You’d have to hunker down

inside those hacked, graffittied walls to read playlists

logged in marbled composition books by DJs

swamped with student debt, suited up in army

surplus gear. And was I what I played? Bleached

bangs and teased-out hair, up sometimes as late

as dawn hammering out prose so minimalist

nothing was left in. I was late to poetry, philosophy

of art, late to the market to realize my soul, no time to

stick around and smoke through Hard Rock Power

Hour with the Disco Redux guys. What couldn’t

punk do if not make things burn a little brighter,

beat back the images burned on our brainpans:

strafe of jets against the sky, foliate walls of flame,

families bunkered down, and radioactive water

waste drifting downstream. . . . Out of luck and out

of love, brew for breakfast, tying up the tattered

laces of granny boots, of combat boots, a lick

of drugstore clear nail polish to keep the