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Poem-a-day

Burn Out

Everything is fine: a means to endure  
news cycles, historic cycles, menstrual 

cycles. This is walking home after work,  
crawling into bed naked. Night, quiet with 

snow. I am an empty bank account.  
I am a pylon glowing in the dark. I am  
a primal scream. I am not here.         

The body speaks first. If that doesn’t work,  
the mind empties: a crate of crabs scuttling

toward nothingness. Authoritarianism 
blossoms like a corpse flower: foul men 

spread their stench across the globe.  
I remember these songs. It’s all on fire. 

A meteor // a virus // a bomb   
like a dark-eyed angel hurtles toward us. 

I’d like to see the ocean lap against a glacier 
before the end. I’d like to see the northern 

lights. I’d like to watch effigies of foul men  
burn in the desert. I’d like to be there, reel there, 
at the end.

Copyright © 2026 by Amy M. Alvarez. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 23, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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Amy M. Alvarez

Amy M. Alvarez
Photo credit: Adam Lewis
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About Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year. Khaled Mattawa is the Guest Editor of December. Read or listen to a Q&A with Mattawa about his curatorial process, and learn more about the 2025 Guest Editors. Support Poem-a-Day.  

If you have any questions about Poem-a-Day, visit our Poem-a-Day FAQ.

Previous Poems

Title Author Date
Altitude Cyrus Cassells 12/30/2019
Song for the New Year Eliza Cook 12/29/2019
I Am Like a Leaf Yone Noguchi 12/28/2019
Child in Big Toy Mario Chard 12/27/2019
Nunataq Joan Naviyuk Kane 12/26/2019
XLV [Before the ice is in the pools] Emily Dickinson 12/25/2019
No, You Shut Up Raymond McDaniel 12/24/2019
House Call Joanie Mackowski 12/23/2019
Sonnet XLIV [For Thee the Sun Doth Daily Rise, and Set] George Santayana 12/22/2019
How I Became a Madman (Prologue) Kahlil Gibran 12/21/2019

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