By: Kiley Brockway 

Fever Dream

A night of coughing to long awaited sleep brought this on.

I wonder what monster crawls round the TIGHT
Boarded up doors of our midNIGHTS
To listen to may to lay to pray
SHUSH! If you are careful you might spare the LIGHT
Twisting orange meat in our sick deLIGHT

Well that was cheap
Repetition is not my favored technique
A slant – is that legal in the land of sleep?
Voices! Voices! What perfection do you seek?

To listen to may to lay to pray
We slip beads through molars and choke on the Holy Mother.
We play sacred make believe to our Sunday comforts
Making cheap sonnets out of songbirds
Making bad love to Ancient Psalms.

Voices! Voices! What perfection do you seek?
Sleep! Sleep! Sandman, please banish my words back to dreams
I’m thoroughly inconsistent, confusion is my pleasure
A perfect hypocrite, loving me must be disaster.

We play sacred make believe to our Sunday comforts
Make ancient love to my bad songs
We’ve never done this before, have we, you nor I?
Well you, more than me, are the bases to all my fresh insecurities
Maybe I’ll write in my own someday, you’ll read, and it’ll sound like me.

I wonder what monster crawls round the tight
Boarded up bars of our midnights
Hush, if you are careful you might save light
Tossing apple skin, figuring letters, too worried for words, praying to the candlelight.

and so he wept

and so he wept
at the palace of the broken hearts
on the stage of mourners

he wept With the grace of a killer
With the sorrow of a songbird
With the agony of a player
With the tentativeness of a slut

he wept without warning
he wept with contempt

he wept puddles into pillars
cries into columns

his weeping was worshiped.
his puddles became a prophet.
his cries buckled the knees of kings.

as fate had it,
his tears became a tyrant
a curse to those who held him close
but instead of slitting his bubbling throat
he was left, left to be alone

And so He wept.

“The Tragedy of Apollo and Hyacinth,” or, “Screw You Romeo and Juliet”

Hail to Apollo, damned of the fates!
Make peace to the blood of the land, spilling insides into coffin constellation graves
Do not mistake them of pleasure, each moan of lost at being denied the gates
A bulb to be set, drowned roots in tears of the sweet forgave.
First, screw that whore Romeo and his child bride, Juliet
Greatest love story of all time, Ha! my ass
(Personally, I only cared for Mercutio, pity to be kept as a plot puppet)
How can you expect me to weep, for suffering dismissed in seconds flat?
Quit your curse, it wasn’t your fault he slipped the disc
Answer me, which is the greatest of classics;
When both die or when one must live on, banished love left to myths,
Tell me, which is more tragic?
Now, close love, I ask you, how can we be expected to win
When even the smelling sweet no-name-rose, and the sweat watered Hyacinth
Were doomed to begin?

Ghost of Things

There’s a cabinet under my stairs
where the ghost of things hide.
Where the memories are cobwebbed
in between dirty corners
And mirrors are disembodied and forgotten
Leaving glass fading lilac and reflections cut blue.

Where windows are shut against maggot cremation
And latches are tied with the twine
of last year’s unraveled Christmas bows
(or the year before’s, who really knows?)

Boxes are stacked
in a stepstool to the shelves
ladders of unsturdy cardboard and peeling packing glue.
Those boxes were scored in the dumpster of a store
once they had unpacked their shipped eggs.
I didn’t know then that our collection made us poor.

Envelopes can be wiggled out from the crack where
shelf just scrapes the floor.
It’s more than likely a love letter,
one that escaped the ash that was swept off ages ago.

It’s romantic,
the moth nibbled linens stuff in the drawer
And the mildew dripping
from the line where laundry used to hang
Or the rotting of music
you can smell it off the cigar stains on the keyboard
there, in the back.

Side tables with flowers cut to stems,
limp and dry in cheap vase cracking
sweet perfumes of another time.
This is how sentiment dies.

This is the cabinet under the stairs
I advise you try not pick the lock
There are reasons things like these hide.

Nonsense!

And the jester’s a fool
thinking he can learn his lefts from right
Sane men still don’t know how to think
My body still shakes
Malnourished from the mind
What a snapping vine
God, Please show me another rhyme!
Inconsistent till I die
Love! Come here, don’t forget mine!
I’m writing all this to be placed in the wrong collection of time
Nonsense, nonsense, what, you call this pride?
Come together, circle, fire, song,
Sing my darlings, sing and forgot,
Chant forever, abide
For Now and Together
Sing For Nigh!