Forbes and Fifth

Go to Sleep; An Epitaph

Go to Sleep

Each friend enters a rumination.

A single drink can draw time-illusions from music.

 

This is how it works in Pittsburgh when the snow is thin.

On the roof of your house purple mini-lights writhe, "let's forget,"

lollypops and cigarette butts in shot glasses

and we hear sirens far enough away

to be almost comforting.

 

Of course this is all before.

Friends will break themselves into distant voices

 

with patience.    In the apartment next-door the night is overtaken,

slurred into conversation the pitch of carelessness.

It sifts through a shared wall, taste of beer breath in syllables, and I let the noise be my lullaby.

 

An Epitaph

A few of us corpses still wiggle as we ripen in the sun.

Brendon had the most beautiful bones in the camp,

When the other corpses still had enough blood in them to beat us. We were the guard's favorite,

Our pink badges earning us the most work and the least food. They let the dogs peel Brendon before he had fully ripened, His legs still able to run, though not far.

His crimson bits glistened in the tufts of their sin-black manes, But the dogs were still envious.

Even the earth where his scraps soaked was beautiful. I go to that spot when I can get away,

Sift my ingers through the dirt And hold the ground against me

Like an elephant caressing its family's bones.

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Volume 1, Spring 2012