Issue .5

Copyright © 2015 By Joshua BohnsackAll rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced without permission.

This book is fiction, well poetry, technically. Resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.Printed in the United States of America.

Long Day Press LLC

www.LongDayPress.com

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Wipers rundown a mountain roadserpentinebelt in rainslips a littlechirps and gripsten and twoAmerican spiritsroll downteeth and shift

in seat slightlythe throat holdheat liftseach nightpiston ringsspread pulsethrough canyonsreturningacceleratedla-la

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This year:

Lose the hand-hold in the grocery maze,

The mistake you can’t come back from,

Breakdown on the wrong way home,

Rub as much salt in the womb,

As much as it needs to never lush

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Again with velvet red & rest when

You’ve, one day, met your fated

Reaping—dry as barreled whiskey, as the barrel

Of the gun’s kiss—as flesh feasts on its own decadence,

Detonates the blackout whole—Kapow-der-kegs

Up in smoking streaks of seasoned blush

Bash my Christmas back to autumn, frost the bitten,

Slaughtered bodies, chop each once-carved gourd-de-lys

Holy, holy, hollyhock: all saints shall stop, drop & reconvene

—Rob the junk shops—for the reckoning, for the retreat,

The Reform (nailing themselves to every door) & then, there,

Dormant sufferings must

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Hatch in the rapture of each dauntless plot, each

Lusted-after disaster—gutted of objections—lost

Less than the wandering flock (awestruck,

Astray); they flush with the simplest of longings, but

Forget-me-nots may blossom then,

Blue as borrowing—we’re borrowing—time

Taut on a livewire

Runs to tell us all it’s seen,

Stunned, shutter-stunted,

Shunted electric,

On its teetering detour:

Resolves to carry on unchanging

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of that Fourth of Julyatop a mother’s housing complexwaves emanating outfrom the explosion a sudden shift of impedancerefracting fromtower to tower like bombswe agreed left the roof topfor the Cedar District sidewalk wherewe found our bikes in the bombast& rode through months & wintercame & that was the winter thatwe entered Iraq I woke one morning toa televised nation my parents watched& all I wanted to know waswhy no one was speaking & if I could go outside& I lost the next five years of memoryuntil I’m lost in the trees trying to find Hidden Beachexpecting my destination in the thickets

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