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"The End of the World" by Azihan Yusoff (Getty Images)


​by Rhen Kent-Jaynes

Winner: 2023 Poetry Award

In college my friends had “apocalypse parties,”
nights of consuming rations left to one of us
by a paranoid prepper aunt who died of cancer.

Instant macaroni and cheap vodka, mostly.
A few summers back a girl I knew attended a camp
to practice survival in the Olympic rainforest.

One holiday weekend I drove to the mouth
of the Mississippi River. There’s a town called Venice
known as “The End of the World,”

but I could only reach the outskirts by car;
the road was submerged in brackish tide.
I turned back toward New Orleans. Later it came up

when I got tired of the same eyes every day
and started asking new questions, like,
“How far have you ever been from home?”
​


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Rhen Kent-Jaynes (she/her) was an essential worker early in the pandemic and now works for a labor union. Her work has been featured in Oroboro, Angel City Review, and COAST|noCOAST. She lives in Seattle. Twitter @rkjaynes
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MASKS Literary Magazine is sponsored by the Columbia College Chicago Library and was founded as part of the Aesthetics of Research Program-an ongoing series of exhibits, events, and other shenanigans dedicated to exploring the role that libraries play in artistic process, creative community building, and resource-sharing in the arts. 
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  • Featured
  • Issue
  • Interviews
    • Natalie Arriola
    • Kim Chinquee
    • Melissa Meier
    • Miya Turnbull
    • Molly Yingling
    • Kate Wisel
  • Submissions
    • Guidelines
    • Contests
  • About
    • Masthead
    • Our Mission
  • Buy