appealing

The Maynard
Fall 2020

James Cagney
0:00
 
 

from Vanishing Twin Syndrome

          VII

              Born clean from my mother,
daily I dress myself in mud + axel grease
              fish skin + coyote blood.
Birds see me as the herald of death
              kicking the confinements of silence.

I dent every frame     I crack every shell
              Test every system
even this cluster of nerves...    the last on Earth.

If nothing gets tested, how will you know anything works?

I perfectly dismantle anything unbroken,
break land speed records on my Schwinn,
bionic with skill                           I can fly.
This body awarded with stitches.
Every weekend I am thrown together again
              in my father’s Golgotha.
He says he brought me here and
wants his money’s worth.

              His word is BOND
                                                    not sorry.

He thump sorry words out my mouth.

He say: love makes men weak. Save that word
for when you start your first fire
nobody can put out.