The Death Spread
       

A world where fall can be anything you want it to be.

Brave dahlias booming through November.

In Africa, the last living lion waits for death's gold coat.

Every night, just after sunset, a bank of low fast clouds crosses the bridge.

You remember him standing there with a bag of flat round candy.

He's alive and it's troubling you.

He should be sealed inside a plastic jug of milk.

Sunk to the floor of the drowned valley behind the dam.

The black mountain in your chest steams open.

Your heart is a pearl-dotted starfish with arms the color of life.

Happy as a dog, you let love die on the sand.

As often as champagne opens you're there to catch the foam.

You stand at the ocean's foaming edge dreaming of shirts to build.

A white dog.

A flamingo balanced on one leg, sleeping pink knot of itself.

You remember trying to sleep.

The little fruit bat hanging above you, the chunks of mango, dripping.

Sticky all night, and then, in the kitchen window, you and a shadow approach the sink.

A yolk slides down the drain.

Is there some advantage to holding your silverware that way, you asked.

That's what it was like, being young: a blameful flourish.

You're not supposed to be a wild carrot but you are.

A whole wild carrot he moves on from.

You're full of abandoned missile silos.

You drive into the Wyoming part of you where it's obvious there have been some sacrifices.

Horses scream.

The skeleton of a calf's been wrapped around a pipe.

Tornado approaching, gravel beginning to lift.

It's kidnapping the moment but you're free to leave.

When you leave a cloud of black flies emerges from underneath your car.

Everyone who ever knew you gently roams the town at the bottom of a lake.

They flash to the surface, sometimes, and you see them.

You name them without worry.

You up to your shoulders in love.

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Copyright © 2016 Tyler Brewington All rights reserved
from Salt Hill
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission