air so cold breath rattles down my throat like a penny tumbling in
the cracked engine of a 2008 ford ranger going 75 on 45 with a broken a/c &
full of candles during an ice age exhaling 2 centuries worth of disappointment.
a loose spark plug coughs tufts of chromed grass. i figure that to be this cold
i must have earned it, like stepped on the crack that grew into the unbalancing
earthquake or burnt the last drop of coal needed to smother the earth’s
atmosphere with a black velvet blanket. the sun might as well be the innocence
of my childhood. what cannot be fled becomes appendage. i inhale, & snowmen
plot in the alley behind my eyes. i piss, & ice shuffles in a whiskey glass.
when i drink water, i’m a fistful of salt spreading on saturn, feet buckets of blood
beneath a butcher’s table. a shirt, black sweater, & flannel coat coax my organs
from resignation. i’m a seed sown in layers of wool, polyester, nylon, every memory
of soup burning tongue. i’ll drown in these blankets, te lo juro, full of heat
with nothing left to burn. i inhale ropes of rebar tumbling down a pink well.
i exhale a cloud of satin stalactites that disperse & outline my obsidian reflection.
