I used to be a horse. Of twitching lip.
Of flaxen dun. My mind,
as it was, among practice rounds
fired into hay bales.

Those bones are not my bones.

Empty the spit-valve as we march
this embezzled frontier,
bedazzled by the dullness

of the blood. There’s music outside:
a firing squad, bellows emptying.

I’ve seen the latter days.
My insomnia, unsinkable, festers
with the buoyancy of a Leviathan.
We’re better off lying

together in bed, festively passing
the time by entombing what’s past:

you in your emblazoned brassieres,
me with a rising smell of iron.
It’s been a long day & important.
We have been fires lazily jumping

the highways, eating grass
to induce vomiting. Understand,

I don’t mean to sing disaster.
Believe if you can the rooting lines
around my eyes, this simple smirk.

It rolls in waves, it sings itself.

Sleepless through the night,
awaiting reveille, I’ve collected
a neat pile of my venial sins

& a tray of water.

Your migraines, my errancy,
we’re better off married;
marred a dearer red.

Leave if you can, tired sister,
but take your torch song,

now, indeed, anew. The crickets sing
“cricket, crick-et,” etc.

Listen:

Author Image

B.J. Soloy

B.J. Soloy plays guitar, banjo, washboard, and suitcase drumkit in the anachronistic prog-yawp outfit Dear Sister Killdeer, whose album, This Is My Hand, should be available somewhere sometime soon. He has poems published or forthcoming in New American Writing, Horse Less Review, Colorado Review, Court Green, CutBank, Hayden's Ferry Review, and DIAGRAM, among others.