Originally appeared in Locust #8. Splash image by Tish Turl and Adam Turl.
You ask me who
with audible
means of
transportation
dashing to city
transit why I don’t
have
a key
(could that be to
the city)
You, from inside your
publishing house of
unearned income,
ask me,
why there shouldn’t be
financial penalty
exacted for
losing a key to
your
stinking
apartment
where I have had to live
with inner cavities
of wall rot, of which
pretty disrepair
could wait until
after
the spate of Labor
day weekend
celebrations.
This cold draft of
internal thought
should it end up
irony
in somebody’s museum is
the imprint
of some
adult-
child’s iridescence
dead outline —
human blood
at the edge of
your stinking bank
statement,
fitting then you
should ask me
to commodify
the human act
of losing
in that monied look
tartar exasperation,
wine—a key.
We, from outside
looking in
do register
the exhaustion.
For not having is
not providing We
reach
for snow peak
mountains, steal
ice-landings,
sleep.
We comb conundrums dirty
feat. We spend money
we don’t have. Grovel,
cheat.
The steely
fingerprint on the
department store
window the only
relief
to an invisible scale’s
balance sheet.
You ask me You ask me?
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