I will do anything to avoid being caught up
in the thin of the thick of things
just last year I was rife by the river bed
spreading poison oak all over hoping
my skin might erupt in rubicund blooms fit
for good luck or a bearing of extremes
how do you keep your teeth in a row
with so many cracks to slip through
like a suspended drawbridge one faulty step
and so begins the almighty fall inward
could you imagine my father escaped war like
a homophone a name that was not a name
one letter away from the frontlines such that the ink
executes the spelling spells out the execution
for the appropriate order of induction I sustained parties
by folding myself into shelves next to canned peaches
bergamot and aloe vera ginger to ease my feverishness
the stench of hunger covering everything
as a perfume to advertise what’s not inside us
do you have an eye for detail particularly the two
versions of your voice that diverge at this second
moving ever apart thousands of their offspring
screaming in unison I cradle my head
drag my greedy fists through the air to possess them
pack them in a glass jar water through cupped palms
the final sentence would be reverberation but
that’s the thing about desire and impulse
one occupies a state the other impels
—Published 14th of December 2020
About Tryn Brown