Elysium

Wars have raged on

every single continent

but Antarctica.

 

Our children have been

murdered on every landmass—

save Antarctica.

 

Antarctica’s

exempt of taxes, of shady

flimflam men. Even plagues

have stayed away.

 

My dearest Emperor Penguin,

your kingdom is truly bliss.

Paradise is never

where it’s warm

but where it’s cold—and not just any

kind of crisp, but the type that

rimes your beard—like stalks

of winter cattails poised to snap—

not the Santa sort of whiskers—

 

he’s up in the North with

Greed & Capitalism,

the exploitation of

his elves, the Russians drilling oil

and the Yanks on Greenland’s coast;

 

but everyone is equal in

these parts—equally freezing

their asses off—in windchill minus 90,

the scientists in their shacks

 

doing the things they always do

but crimes of passion, or start

a genocide, pilfer property

of someone else—

 

check that—Glen made off with

Gertie’s wooden chess board

back in 1994, not that dates down

here have mattered—

the clocks have all

congealed, the calendar too brittle

to flip—like that thinnest

layer of ice upon

your windshield back at home,

held by huckster gloves which

vowed to toast, your goosebumps

hard as braille.

 

Antarctica

never dishes

a broken heart; for Olga’s in love

with all & brews the balmiest

bowl of borscht you’ve ever had—

soothing as your

grandma’s feathered quilt,

calming like the sliding of your

toes in Fijian sand—a beach your kid

should never amble

all alone:

 

the water’s full of sharks,

the fish are filled with plastic,

and creepy Dr. Tilson’s in his

trenchcoat—regardless of the zephyr

& the moths—barefoot in the garden,

pretending to measure  

fallout, our neural

nuclei; will flash his whole

shebang the very moment

you’ve made an oath to never leave.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

October 14, 2026

photograph: Joey L. / Getty Images