CATACOMB EFREET
nate east
I thought I left you in the witch’s tunnel when the black throat closed over our heads but you must have felt your way up to the surface somehow. I told another woodcutter about our home in the desert today. He couldn’t understand many of the words because he only speaks the language of the sea. When I held your little hand it was brittle and cold, and the knuckles clicked like marbles between my fingers. I should have washed you off my face and hair with cyclone dust but I didn’t, so now when I smoke my morning cigarette on the walk to fire hole in the forest valley I feel your serpent lips in the chill draft and freezing dew on my ankles. I think the artifact you slept is a bottle of blue glass it was the keepsake of a shaman’s child who one night wandered into the desert and caught you like a lightning bug then stopped the bottle with granite so you rattled around inside for a thousand years like ball bearings made of saturn.
Nate East
www.nateeast.wordpress.com
Dead Boys
Richard Lange