Once a beast, territorial yet admirable,
shunned statues and ate a cloud. In a
field south of the post office, he
fondled the envelope of his life, his carefully
constructed life, and the food he ate
made him hyperventilate. Hard to believe
he wore three watches, even in bed! On a
muddy farm in Denmark, he
hallucinated about politicians and bugs
as psychopaths sodomized him with
gift cards, with furry shoes. He came,
he spoke, he scrawled graffiti on giant
detergent bottles. His laboratory was
the universe. Wearing a scarf, he opened
a blues song of a novel and became one
of its shoes, pondering its foot. Outside
the church of the blue people, he kissed
pets goodbye, scratching their heads.
Then he fired a pimento cheese biscuit
at a clean slate because he couldn’t
save butterflies from lost love. Though
he climbed to the top of a plane
and shaped it into a little angel, his
extraordinary story wasn’t meant to be.
He lost his leg, torched black by a
meteorite. In the end, his own wire turned
topsy-turvy under the stars as a life
raft slipped from his shoulder.
Cliff Saunders
Cliff Saunders is the author of several poetry
chapbooks, including Mapping the Asphalt Meadows (Slipstream
Publications) and This Candescent World (Runaway Spoon Press). His poems
have appeared recently in Atlanta Review, Pedestal Magazine, Lullwater
Review, Inscape Journal, The Phoenix, Vagabond City, The Main Street Rag, and
Tipton Poetry Journal. Originally from Massachusetts, he now lives in Myrtle
Beach, SC.
1 Comments
A poetic portrait painted with great care.
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