Marrow #11

 

 

Animals living chained to the rain. In Gas City, Indiana, or some Las Vegas loading chute. I roll with Subaru but then neglect to recycle. Drive, drunk? Slow to a crawl on a country road. Line up quart bottles like citizens, at attention. Do not pass. Do not selectively lumber. I’m so good I boycott McDonald’s, and eat only creatures I locate, stalk, kill, and butcher. For example Bambi. And bubble-flecked bass. Who goes around smallmouth like this: informing others how and what they consume? I need you to think I’m still OK. I got sensibility Prague. A sullen cat. Lilliputian eyeglasses. Oh, that you would eat or sleep with me—on my unassuming floor. Take this cold poem and rub it furiously. In sweaty palm, or softest triangle. Bind in aluminum foil. Add motor oil saliva. Exchange for answers. Why do I curve so? Why not clutch a ghost, or moment of likeability? If the Mobile station (oxymoron) around the block (where I streetlight slouch, to buy just one more warm beer) stays open 24/7, how am I locked inside? Metaphor, metaphor. Exhausting. I am an animal. Bent over barbed wire in the rain. Coughing. Coughing up. Two lungs full of now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sean Lovelace is on a river right now. He has a spinning rod and a beer. Other times he teaches at Ball State University. He recently won the CrazyHorse fiction prize, and his works have appeared in Diagram, Black Warrior Review, Willow Springs, and so on. He blogs at seanlovelace.com.