Leave five billion dollars
in
hard-earned taxpayer money
by the ruins of the
Cathedral.
Do this or your city dies.
P.S. Don't even think of
going
to the authorities.
We are the authorities.
NOTE: The poet wishes to acknowledge the anthology, Leaving the Red Zone: poems from the Canterbury earthquakes, edited by James Norcliffe and Joanna Preston and published by Clerestory Press, February 2016, in which this poem first appeared.
