We are failed
animals, old
without shirts, choking ourselves
into paper towels. A shadow
puppet sticky and birthed,
wailing in its ordinary
fashion. Childhood and such.
These antiques?
Doppler effect,
literate bloom,
sprout of rhubarb
three feet high and chain
link, a quorum of
rain lounging around.
My body is not
my body. Is not
my body is. Not
the sprung tendon
slipping between
pinky and ring
finger. A syntax
of our own:
horse wearing gas mask.
Horse wearing nightingale’s humid song.
Two people wearing horse suits.
Year of fathers riding horses.
Over my life I have praised. How much
was I paid? One turquoise
ring, several bells, initials
scratched in all. Where
is the supplemental
material? The lavish
unraveling, the mice
beneath radiator. This is
almost metaphor. Is it
the season of 4mg Dilaudid
beneath skin, Lou Reed’s mentholated
cigarette, neither, the poem
groaning at a Super 8
motel in Fayetteville,
North Carolina? Our desire
for the double-jointed
pleasure of squeezing
blood from a lemon.
DAVID GREENSPAN is the author of One Person Holds So Much Silence (Driftwood Press) and the chapbook Nervous System with Dramamine (The Offending Adam). He’s a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Southern Mississippi and earned an MFA from UMass Amherst. His poems have appeared, or will soon, in places like Bellevue Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Fence, Narrative, Salamander Magazine, and others.
UZOMAH UGWU is a poet/writer and multi-disciplined artist. Her poetry, writing, and art have been featured internationally in various publications, galleries, and art spaces. Her work’s intention is to draw the eye to something more than what is being seen but felt. She is a political, social, and cultural activist. Her core focus is on human rights, mental health, animal rights, and the rights of LGBTQIA persons. She is also the managing editor and founder of Arte Realizzata.