[In the garden of gray latex foliage]
In the garden of gray latex foliage / mouths eating out and eating in / trembling hands in front of the broken, seeping masks / a static emerald memory lodged in the back, reflecting the partylights / the bulb at the end of the hall at the end of the feast blinking in the graydawn light / lovesick sweet cannibalism /
We drank the wine in the den, among the mounted heads and depthless glass irises / a glitching river of lava current beneath the oceans underneath us / mouths with little gods chewing inside the mouth of big god / shaven figures struggling among themselves, chewing through the middles / bones of the teeth pressing through / nightflood spillage / in glass pupils /
[The parade roamed through, toward the longer shadows]
The parade roamed through, toward the longer shadows and the scent of fires / passed glittering roadkill and shorn doorways / night buried in the throats of day /
They passed patchwork tents, lungs of black leather inhaling /
Walked under trees with brutalized trunks /
Through hallways of bittertasting shrubs /
The woman by the stream, her eyes dark and seeing / chorus of ironwork angels / calling forth and from out /
How rock calcified into bone and wind into speech / no one threaded in the everyone and elsewhere / a number station counting backwards toward the end /
A parade of frost-sharp flowers, of gasping fish with staring eyes /
She slit them open, gutted the inedible portions / her masks our masks / her mouth always at our lips / stamped tin, cold gold / crumble-eyed
Dreaming in their bellies / violet hints blooming in their nightpockets / in steadfast and imploding descent /
[Angles of salt frozen along the shoreline]
Angels of salt frozen along the shoreline / grain and grain blown Elsewhere / garbed in moss and desiccated shrubbery / hips without legs, shoulders without chests /
Unwound, unstrung / holes in the flesh through which the wind burns /
Through the stony bluff the precession wound / salt breeze chafing / halo oilflames along the viaduct / high beasts of rust from which ivy clings /
Heights of each pit, heavens of air in the caverns /
James Pate is a poet, fiction writer, and book reviewer. He has had work published in Black Warrior Review, 3:AM Magazine, Tarpaulin Sky, Ligeia, Coffin Bell, and Occulum, among other places. His books include The Fassbinder Diaries (Civil Coping Mechanisms) and Flowers Among the Carrion: Essays on the Gothic in Contemporary Poetry (Action Books Salvo Series).
Image: reddit.com
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