ashes – south broadway press

Gone, Already

Vegetable matter,
dried skin on kitchen floor.

Scorpion season: thorax-shaped
tomato stems fool me into terror.

Dog presses against
barbed wire links,
with nowhere to go
but the same ten feet of earth.

One hundred degrees
for the rest of the month.

Ashes on shelf,
spirit in atmosphere,
long past the point

of concern. You have
flown north again,
towards cooler weather.

Sometimes your eyes
stare like the dog’s,
but I know it’s just me
trying not to forget.

Leah Mueller lives in Bisbee, Arizona. She is the author of ten prose and poetry books. Her new book, “The Destruction of Angels” (Anxiety Press) was published in October 2022. Leah’s work appears in Rattle, NonBinary Review, Citron Review, The Spectacle, Miracle Monocle, New Flash Fiction Review, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She is a 2023 nominee for both Pushcart and Best of the Net. Her flash piece, “Land of Eternal Thirst” appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions. Website: www.leahmueller.org.

Factoring

I did not see the naked man on King Street.
He was one of those “Nudes for God.”
Instead, Jacob slides in like a snail on pink slime.
wailing, as high-pitched as a gibbon.

He rubs his puckered eyes roughly.
And his jelly-mouth ripples in the clock face.
Five in the morning detaches itself from time.
His kiss unties me though it smells of dead cologne.

I am only here so I can be here when he’s here.
My secret life continues it existence in him.
But he’s kin to a decomposed insect.
I squeeze his innards into a likeness of myself.

Well-Spread

There are parts of me everywhere.
Like curled up on a park bench.
Or preaching the dead cult of sex.
Or naked and looking for work.

I deserve breeze but reap the stillness.
My gloomy fire begins as ashes.
In the reading room of the public library,
that’s my head opened wide at page 3.

Herman Melville spits in my ear.
I follow a handsome man into a doctor’s office.
I slink into a movie theater, drink out of an army boot.
Snow or gay bar, the flakes prove inconclusive.

Andrej Bilovsky (he/him) is a gay poet and performance artist. Former editor of Masculine-Feminine and Kapesnik. His poetry can be found at the Quiver and Down In The Dirt.

Tag: ashes

Gone, Already | Leah Mueller

Two Poems | Andrej Bilovsky