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Justin D'Angona |
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Night Swimming It was one of those nights When the Moon takes you up in is teeth Chews you shapeless And spits you out on the cold sands of a cold beach Where the sea laps up on the shore And sucks grains of sand through your splayed toes, Begging you to let it suck you to, Suck everything clean, Suck the brown specks from your soul, And leave you floating like a fetus, Innocent amidst the chunks of ice and Knots of black seaweed That sway in the swelling tide And drift out over the edge of the world. ***** The Hunter His eyes are nothing like the distant stars; Two onyx marbles, lodged in a lifeless face, No longer glowing, like the end of a cigar, Once brilliant sparks, so easily erased. He rests, motionless, on the forest floor On a soft mattress of spongy green moss, In the quietest shade of the seedless fern; His antlers gouge down into the cold dirt. The rifle trembles slightly in my grip As I walk towards the stag’s fallen corpse. Slowly, I bend down to cradle its head But something makes me stop. Instead, I scoop us an armful of leaves And spread them over him like a blanket. I turn to leave, leaving the dead thing To be swallowed by the forest. ***** Rollerblading Accident I charged the handrail, But the frames of my skates, Made brittle by winter cold, Cracked in half, Flinging me off the rail And onto teeth, with a crunch, Which was muffled by the gushing pulp of my mouth. “Fuck!” I screamed through a fistful of bloody chicklets, And the quivering red silk of spit, blood and mucous That sailed in strings from the spaces between my fingers. “Are you okay?” My friends looked down. “No, not really.” “Get up and try it again you pussy,” they comforted. ***** The Couch She sits on Zack’s lap in the photo, Staring out of the picture at me like a ghost. His ribs push out from up under his skin. He barely indents the cracked leather cushions of The same couch where his sister, age six, Will kiss me on the mouth when I’m not looking, In front of the babysitter who is too busy telling us that Pocahontas Has dick-sucking lips, and that Crack smoke smells like burning plastic. The babysitter will quit Sick of Zack’s unwelcome sexual advances, And left unattended on a hot day His sister will dive into the stagnant Unchlorinated water of the above ground pool, The splash disintegrating the flaccid maple leaves That had been marinating all winter I’ll find her floating face down And drape the remains of what used to be a little girl Over the arm of the couch As I call for help Not thinking to put down a towel to soak up the wetness Which will cause the cushions to shrink and split |
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