for
Peter Schwartz
I am
hungry, the road is black and I’m drowning down here. I can’t sleep like I used
to. I have no bones, no teeth. I’m under the mountain that’s beneath the sea
that’s under the surface that can’t speak, vomiting what I can’t breathe. I’m
coal, moaning red. The sink overflows. The truest tide doesn’t. I watch the
blue blood and dark gray meat swell. My hands and feet are tied, tied tight to
the long light that lands on each slat of wood and melds into metal and makes
the vehicle smooth and right. There’s no day no night no day no night. I suggest a paved escape route through our
pineal glands. I suggest feeling your way through. Teach yourself to distinguish the difference between float and simmer,
kettle and whistle, life and afterlife. You can be a clarifying ocean; you can
see the waves thick on your inside skin. But here we are, boneless, toothless,
groaning. I am the red hunter that waits and waits. I cross my arms across my
chest. I clean my fingernails. I watch the snow drop and melt. I, the red
hunter, is the one who sits and waits on the winter to wake up, to come home.
The winter takes over. I’ve captured punishment and tuned in real wide. I spin;
I falter; I frame the nook in gray. I wait for the weight to fall, the knives
to be brandished, the water to warm. This is where I wait, cold and whole and
like home.