CAN’T IT GO AWAY?angels like cherry pits in the sack of weeds-- how lines relax in the wake of summer. take this coral, make it bloom again in cooler hydrogen. stream in the basement, pastrami and swiss in the alley on microphone and asphalt. pocked, asleep, within the numbers lies no import, no import at all. EXPECTORATION OF PROSCENIUMTiger it. Watch the bowl fill up with red. Sometimes it happens. Self-winding watches never fail to run down. Take a leak on the dogleg in the road and roast a couple crab for the barbecue tomorrow. I'll take a VFW dinner anytime, thanks, with a side of soldiers' blood and the biscuits you forgot to bake. Everybody loves a doughboy. Time to head for the front, kiss your hot meals goodbye. /I am not awake and yet the seconds tick by drip by drip the water moves past the dam HOW THE WORLD THINKS WE’RE ALL MISSING OUT IF WE’RE NOT SHOOTING DOPEHave you missed this? It’s two years since the last time I kissed you and in the meantime we sit here in this Telephone Lineman’s Local hall and trade patterns, aluminum cans, the sweet sweat of lips on lips. We’ve begged the gods for passage through the mountain passes, but the silence that results is enough to make us question the efficacy of our last living relatives in Latrobe, PA. I still remember how your lips tasted, the sweetness of elderberry against the saltiness of sweat, the Catalan Architecture of your bones against the inevitable waves of my tide, the fucking nothing we can do against the infinite pressure of Mount Samalas. You are my volcano; I am your lava. How do we solve this? Your guess is as good as mine. I WANT YOUThere is a dog that lives at the house down the street he is usually tied to the garden hose out back one day the dog got free and came over to lick my face in the brush of his tongue in the warmth of his fur in the wag of his tail I thought of you his heart beat fast and he squirmed when I picked him up but when I stroked his neck he was calm and when I put him down on the grass he trotted home and scratched at the back door until they let him in LUCIDYour nightmare last night the long driveway in the rain the brutalist building the loomed over the tiny car the woman who emerged with her wheelchair and her assistance and her smile the same smile they all have vacuous but with a predatory slant to the eyebrows I know this because I was the driver and before she could get to the car I asked you don't worry, do you think we could afford this? and I drove away SALADA gelatinous gumshoe walks the streets of Alhambra, though what he searches for no one is sure. Elaine, the ten-year-old girl with waist-length braids who may or may not be his daughter, is on a ride-along today as he looks for clues. She trails behind with metal detector and fingerprint kit, interrogates only the manholes that look suspicious. They run across the Sacred Heart of Emmaus in the Whole Foods parking lot, bag it, tag it, head for evidence. SECOND-STORY MANThe research has been done. Conspiracies of flying cats. The higher-dropped land, and live, correctly. They are used as burglar alarms for the unwary, hidden in trees, on fire escapes. Avoid the striped ones; they cling, and the declawed are useless. Get in, damage, drop. Effective system. SEVEN OF CUPSi: after the party There has been too much boysenberry wine, too much eighties hair metal, and the road home twists more than it did when we were on our way. Arm in arm we sing, each a different song but no one notices. The bottle is passed again. We turn away from shut shops and into houses, apartments; the time has come to sleep it off. For God so loved the world—Axel stares up at the night sky, counts stars, sees things in clouds no one else can see. One last swig, the empty tossed into the bushes of a Civil War mansion, white, gabled, of many rooms. Goodnight, my friend! Traci calls after the flaps of his duster. Sleep well, and dream good dreams! Her amaranth hair disheveled, eyes bleared, ready for bed. Our meek apartment farther, farther down the road, across the tracks. If Death were seen at first as Death, Love had not been—I mumble as she keys the door, guides me through, then up stair after stair after stair. Do we disrobe? I cannot tell. I love you, darling, Traci whispers, and I laugh and say I know. ii: the dream of the banshee I am in love with the woman Night; she comes and take me to a grey plain. There is laughter from the trees and that looks like a tiger but everything is black and white so it must be a zebra she points and there is a saddle but I know nothing of how to attach such things so I mount bareback and the tiger or the zebra looks back and me but trots off anyway and the trees laugh and tears on my face and where the zebra or the tiger is going I do not know and just as a huge structure appears on the horizon I awaken iii. the dream of the rose these shorts are too tight but naught to be done about it now. There is a marriage to attend. You go out the back door to cut a rose for the bride and discover they are all green. (This was not the case last night.) A boy in clown white, no more than ten, frolics with toads by the back gate; when you step forward he scampers over, withdraws a pair of shears from his pocket. Selects the largest, greenest rose, and snips an eighth of an inch from the juncture. This is for the bride, he says, his voice deeper than it should be, but it is also for your love. He will understand what to do with it. You take his hand, bend down; he strings a small silver cross around your neck. Admission to the wedding, he says. You’ll need it. Through the house; the limo awaits. iv: the dream of the breast My mind has whispered you a thousand times, Traci, errant recordings of love never made. My fingers stretch to touch you, fall just atoms short, beg lavender fire. My mouth begs for the warmth of you pressed against me beneath down comforters and I silence it with boysenberry wine. I look at you beside me, see that the neckline of your shirt is open far enough to catch a glimpse of one cream-colored breast. And life is now a snapshot, a soliloquy stopped mid-syllable. I would sign away my skin, with a number of nerve endings to be named later, if I could only dress myself in yours. v: the dreaded sun arises we wake on piles of yellow-covered paperbacks to the groan of sirens. All they lure us to, however, is aspirin and the shower. I send an entire stack of copies of In Praise of Older Women to the floor as I try to rise. You stumble to the door, head for the kitchen to make coffee, fiddle with the green rose pinned to the pocket of your shirt. Where did that come from? you ask, voice logy. No idea, I say, perhaps we should ask Axel. He knows about these things. Okay, you say, but after coffee. There must be ecstasy. There must be rot. I turn on the shower, make it cold. SUBSTANCEdeep across from you short dress like a Cecil B. DeMille film halfway up your thighs I stroked tonight searched for muscle and bone Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in FEED October Series, Breathe, and Passager, among others.
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