The Survival Expo

It’s mostly men inside the Agricenter,
pricing seed vaults and metal shelters, knives
and MREs spread over dressed up tables
like alms for fraught apostles—Take, eat—
and we expected this, my friend and I,
but came in anyway, for fun, I guess,
except, to me, it feels a little like a test
to prove how out of place we aren’t,
which, I’ll acknowledge, is flaw of mine,
this tendency to double down, pretending
things are fine, a tactical response,
like when my friend tells me she’s feeling better
and all I do is compliment her hair,
how thick it’s growing in, how glad I am,
before I train my focus on the rep
selling disaster rations made for pets—
taste-tested, he explains, on cats, since dogs
will eat whatever, but cats are picky bastards—
and see, his pack will hold a month’s supply,
and here’s a pocket for your gas mask,
and here’s a pamphlet about chemtrails too …
But it’s the truth we’re sorely unprepared
for even minor hazards, acts of god
and whatnot, living as we do along
a semi-dormant fault in Tennessee,