My stick figure is nothing
but a gussied up sodbuster.
And me, deranged in the disturbed pools
of your eyes. Fuck this
Still a shitty little suicide note.
Jolts of palaver. The flutter
of our career so far away
on a Tuesday afternoon,
some sort of weather in the sky.
This ironic precipice whips our sins
back into our faces. The narrative arc
of a subtle slaughter. The time
Judas forked food off your plate.
The time I put on the peppermint tea.
The moment the quiet dark path opened.
Is there anything heroic about living
windblown and weatherbeaten?
Glopping under your eyes, pieces
of broken things, angry bees, a hopscotch
of gin and blood. There’s a Samaritan for you,
talking your broken body back to shore
at the bottom of the fall.
Brian Builta lives in Arlington, Texas, and works at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. His work has been published in North of Oxford, Hole in the Head Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, TriQuarterly and 2River View among others.
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