And of these rivers which curve
as all rivers curve the way a scythe claims wheat
there the gun’s warm tongue in your hands
admire how these hands spread with worship
like a greasy and over-thumbed takeout menu
no this is not my native violence never
the ease of inheritance
the violets they are mid-bloom underfoot of a great stampede
your gums sour with the taste of leather
black boots striking curb and jaw
law striking teeth and tongue
everywhere you look the highwaymen their steady gaze stripping
our tender meat clean off the bone
they teach us we have left mercy so far behind
we survey what is left what monuments have withstood our ambitions
mercy it has laid down to sleep
amid the fragrant burning of fields
fields through which I once took the steps of a beginner
the gentleness of our hands now remembered as their own myth
the silence around here thick
like a film of pond scum in the stinging heat
everyone folds into death alone
my skull still filled with stochastic nursery rhymes
and from her soiled bed my great aunt
veteran of slain emperors and the kingdoms still pluming with smoke
their dead languages their gold worthless
how she used to sing to us from her cigarette-stenched bed of a great rapture
a prophecy spoiled in the back of our throats
while we circled her in that nursing home’s makeshift mausoleum
her skin or snake skin within our hands
her hand-me-down virtues meant
as a signal flare
use only in case of emergency only when goodness is in scarce supply
now we cannot even name the bodies that line these streets
fill these tents and trucks like party supplies late for delivery
what good are these limbs of ours now what good is heresy
so late in the game
you ask me to open wide and I can feel both our tongues
held within the iron web of disbelief
within good and evil
which is just a novice’s way of saying now and later
would you believe there is no paradise left for us
at least nothing from which we can be profiteers or kings
or whatever title matters most at this intersection
no treasure left to plunder
all the maps we’d been promised used as kindling when the flames sank low
keep your eyes open do not let those objects
in the mirror obtain their true size true purpose
if you’re not careful the future
will march in a stumble across the cracked breasts of these bone-dry valleys
it will come as an army off the tongues of barons their naked bodies cased in thorns
the future
wielding progress and industry
as all great harbingers do in a pinch
making due with the histories our parents and their parents took to their graves
the present wielding its barbaric weight over our heads
the ground trembles
the land certain how the die will be cast
even now a room empties of air fills with the trebled hook
of gunshot which is bird song which is another body hitting the linoleum floor
all our windows flung open to welcome night’s black flame
because we were never taught to keep our hands off a hot stove
the lawns we’ve entertained are all curling like lips
every home now temple to a lesser god the choke and wind of suburban salvation
the cost is not what matters the cost is merely
that which we forget if we close our eyes
hallelujah these are the bodies we will surrender to Death in
can’t you feel the miraculous can’t you taste the divine
listen ear to the earth for God’s feeble’d children
still and weeping on their knees
in the mud and piss and blood
our greatest exports have always been the split of flesh the breach of siren
feel how artillery strikes against skull how it fills us with the blood’s poetics
these bruised lips made for elegies but also lies
these limbs bent into the arc of too little too late
I cannot hear you when you ask
what waits in the back of our throats as we lay dreaming
in the dark you swear you swear you swear you
can feel the gun’s warm tongue
your hand a swoon of worship a collapsing kingdom
this violence then silence
nothing more than rapture and its delicious heat
we were promised we’d inherit
the earth or what’s left in
this silence this
violence as the rivers curve once more
Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a queer writer and coffee devotee from New York. Sometimes he’s in love, just as often he’s not. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize/Best of the Net, and has appeared in numerous publications, including The Penn Review, Sho Poetry Journal, and Trampset. He can be found on Twitter/Instagram: @DanielJBrennan_.
Image: mallenbaker.net
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