bone – south broadway press

Shard
after Joseph Ceravolo

it’s
one thing to pull time
like taffy, America,

if maybe you had
enough sugar to form

a sweet ball, organic
and tender, but it’s another to blank and
piss and smack real

people around just to
see what we can take
until we eat us
sugared flesh from
candied bone this

unspooled ticking wild
heart the last last god

As Hunger for Melon

How close sweetness is to rot. Begging and easy to want. Leave the hard-won water of astringent rind. Hold something darker in the mouth, something so close to loss you feel it on the bone. Give honey, give wine. Fill a plate, a belly, a chalice. Let the sick light of midday collapse the tender center; let the bees get drunk and dream through the neon bulldoze of the afternoon. Spit the seeds, or swallow. Cry when swallows slice the sky. Red life, swollen, falls out.

Kate Beall (she/her) lives and writes in Colorado, nestled between the mountains and the plains. Her work has been published in FERAL: A Journal of Poetry & Art, HAD, and Words & Sports Quarterly. Find her on Twitter at @katebbeall.

Slurred croak cracked collarbone

head shaved tight to the pinking flesh

a pure invention of street life

synthesized and wired for direct current

breakfast juddering under ultraviolet

charred and caramelized with a blast

of woodsmoke as coffee is guzzled syllables

sputtering from misshapen tongue

the stink of syrup of hot sauce and vinegar

silence hanging heavy between

the throb of another morning and the stale

breath of the previous night

no recollection pervades his damaged mind

of how besotted the leather drool

of survival staggered him homeward

through greased and gut-churning detour

steel-pinned and bone-plated with memory

of smoke and gasoline he lights his flame

in competition with the rising sun

a crimson sky his furnace.

Paul Ilechko is the author of the chapbooks “Bartok in Winter” (Flutter Press) and “Graph of Life” (Finishing Line Press). His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Juxtaprose, As It Ought To Be, Cathexis Northwest Press, Inklette and Pithead Chapel. He lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ. FB: pilechko Insta: njscattista

Tag: bone

Two Poems | Kate Beall

Dawn as an Act of Survival – Paul Ilechko