July 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
pick a day
where none of the wars
involve you
describe the sky
and the taste of the wind
do the hills spin slowly around
this piece of land you
call home?
are you in love?
there is a point
where these questions intersect
a place where your shadow is
as tall
as the man you actually are
and somewhere in the back of your mind
is a list of all the runaway girls
you knew in the summer
of butchered nuns
a list of all the reasons they gave
and now it’s ten years later
and still
no one has stopped running
it happens
anger is only another needle
waiting to be worshipped
the patron saint
of raped cheerleaders
is a myth
and these are not new rumors
and no one’s pain
is unique
no one’s future
is written
and still
it’s not that hard to guess
how badly the stories
of the disappeared
will end
July 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
you are not
in the kitchen
with jesus christ
and he is not
bleeding
you are not curled up on
the cold linoleum with
your husband kicking you
in the back
your children are
not dead
tell yourself this
your children are not
dead
weep bright red
tears of joy
July 2001 | back-issues, poetry
[b]smoked…cooked[/b]
thick bones and hanging skin
are pinned under six wool blankets.
white skull covered
in red wet skin
soaks in soggy pillow.
oven iron
holds oak fire
as an alto woman’s lounge smoked song
cracks through a single speaker
a cigarrette burns
and sleeps moist
in a coffee can of butts,
buried,
smoldering in the swelter,
smoking like the steam
off a pot of simmering water.
a breath weezes
and a throat gargles.
watery blue eyes
slip out from under
greasy lids,
they wiggle
then freeze
then fail to see.
[b]sensation to thought[/b]
blood lips drip open
to a dandy yellow,
a lion sun
lollipop hot
tang-sweet to tongue.
the strength of rays,
of rumbling gun blast slugs
searing through
the grey cloud,
the matter of brain,
to the reason-
heat drips away.
[b]sonnet inkling[/b]
exchange a plastic bag full of your blood
for sticky mint green paper.
exchange sticky mint green paper
for caviar like fake pearls covered in wet ink
inside one rusty chain link.
exchange sticky mint green paper for
pasture covered in dead angus,
holstein and jersey cattle.
exchange sticky mint green paper
for a silver spiral binding,
colored fluid and wood shavings,
and a lamp to tickle them.
ink black light
with linked white shavings.
© 2001 Chad Rood
([email]chad [at] gotcannedgoods [dot] com[/email])
