Continuum of wiped bodies
by Gary J Shipley
[ poetry - november 11 ]
If you can smell the rotten effort in me
you’ll probably think me strained
and my dead babies a franchise.
One day I’m going to survive a massacre
But first let’s see if I can fake my species.
I spend hours shrivelling behind photographs of
open windows.
There will also be drawings of clouds.
And even now they’re replacing my voice.
It says, If this is an accent, I’ll drink your tattoos.
Invitations were sent to the finest asylums
(Who else is going to breastfeed my sores?)
Yet nobody came to violate my skulls.
The hyenas ate me a smile instead
And the spiders lurched into random acts of hair.
I demanded the footage of decomposing soldiers
As there’ll always be more plasters than cuts.
Every man is a lapse of concentration.
It’s not just me dismantled in what I make.
This is the sound of laughter destroying me.
By the end I’ll fetch up in the throats of hallelujahs.
