A GAME IF YOU CAN SET THE RULES

 —we eat souls, don’t we?
the mirror’s chipped, and it is
easy. our throats shouted raw,
fuck us if a whisper would’ve
done. eat quarters from the ground
—the gutter, to get our reward for
eating our fill. aspiring to the
casual cruelty of some midwestern
christ, framed and dusty, hanging
in judgement askew—

FOMER COUNTRY

FORMER COUNTRY

the moon leers,

'I am no

singer'

fuck you-

r gutter

throat.

Be done.

Be gone.

“Every word that you speak / Is a word they have made.”

“Every word that you speak / Is a word they have made.”

devour my tongue, sow
the rich black asphalt



with my spongy teeth.
we are not taut enough



yet

string my sinews,

they are yours to make

sing, to make mockery

of my feeble throat.

THE MOONLIGHT OR HER SKIN [from the vault]

THE MOONLIGHT OR HER SKIN

'nunc tibi me posito visam velamine narres,

sit poteris narrare, licet!' nec plura minata

dat sparso capiti vivacis cornua cervi,

dat spatium collo summasque cacuminat aures

cum pedibusque manus, cum longis bracchia mutat

cruribus et velat maculoso vellere corpus

every night before that day,

for months, he had no sleep,

but his breath caught in his throat,

the baying of the night hounds

echoing in his ears, as he dreamt,

staggering through black woods,

the Huntress looking down

at him from the milky moon,

her blue eyes the clear pools

among the pine forests of his

sleepless dreaming—and after

those restless nights, when that

day finally came, his friends flushing

out hart and doe behind him,

with that dread pool ahead, water

gone still in the silence of his sight,

he knew he would never turn his gaze away—