Falsehoods of Spiked Misery

If only I wasn't required to raise my arms, speaking servitude in this room upholstered with a woman's mischief. If only the heart in my chest was a fully synthetic thing, a petrochemical invention which, if discarded and buried, could conceivably be found by future scavengers — or, more optimistically, archaeologists of high ethical standards and unfamiliar colloquialisms.

Also conceivable is that such a fine cardiac instrument, once invented, will find its way into my chest like an intruder. And these desperate diggers or scholars of distant cultures will find such a thing in a bone lattice, in a box dripping with velvet like tattered flesh.

Roses of the Infirmary

Epic red banners in a good boy's bedroom drip rehydrated dream-cum into the pillow, fermenting acrid visions of tennis court massacres, detailed spreadsheet forensics, fisted eel parties, wholly rejected careers. Tooth gray sea songs from the gazebo outside promise something else, an alternative doom. But everything hinges on the half-life of gratitude, undetermined.

The Wife's Mantis Puppet

Help to make equal the arrangements of the festivities. Your eye for relative quantity, trained by years in the retail killing fields, is as renowned as it is a curse. A soda-colored burden pressing stiff knuckle hands into your each day's efforts in the realm of enjoyment.

Quick, various measurement, fatigued convenience. Steady dependence upon the judgment of temporary shepherds. A rinsed and scraped mind, an abraded sense of pleasure. Tilted back on your heels by this imaginary wind.

Raid Pinch Rush

Mold breath couch beside kneecap indentations, and Stereolab, maybe Sonic Youth. Probably Sonic Youth. The tunings twisted, improper, like my ambitions here — I'd like to say — but I can't claim that intention. Someone else monkeyed with my guitar. If only I could keep the steady synth throb in my chest, if I could capture that and implant it I'd avoid so much of what's coming.

Most of the land is industrial, but an above-ground pool is a pretty good luxury to pick. Acting like a cable installer, because I lack the foresight to aim for the wine repository.

In 12 years, Thurston two-times Kim. Lee seems alright though, stick with Lee.

Against the Snake Truck

A green fabric swatch holds a single egg representing fertility or imagination (perhaps fragility or refrigerated psychosis). Advertisement-grade models parade themselves around it with phone lenses trained on the vertex. The gathered footage is collected thus by sheepfaced women and men who edit it together, intercutting and splicing to find evidence of the marginal viewer. And their sheepfaced offspring are charged with the task of sweeping up the chitinous rubbish left behind, the exoskeleton shards and dismembered elytra once belonging to involuntary invertebrate participants in this dance of futility.

Gumbo with Young Red Cheese

Glen raises goats at Gas Pot Downs. Willie, age 8, scoops licked bead mix from the trench into a converted PVC violin pool. When summers are wet, you might see Clara and Hettie hugging in the makeshift alley where the blight cannot see.

Bracketed by musk jars, the goat bone tower tells the date and time to Willie's potential guardians. Goat skull pavement shines in a drenched musical kinda way.

In drought months, Clara cakes goat tummy drums with Glen's stashed bills, floating baskets made of bead mix scoops lashed together with goat rope in the cistern, as a way to celebrate fungus nutrition and distant goat vision.