Poetry by Devon Brock.
Precarious, this light that hangs from a fissure,ties itself to a wet rail with a tendril and pulls,as if the nether side of a storm breaks,upturned and pillowed in a thimbleless pool. On the plains, shipwrecks poke their prows cotillion,sway in the studied drift of sorghum and wheatthreshed in the hoglight of another wet afternoon.But... Continue Reading →
She hung there, below the silkwith a bundle. Later, a hunk below the faucetremained, drained and quite empty. My coat hangs on a hook,husked and silver-fishedon the thrash end of a string, raggedas ignorance and just as ill-cautioned. Too many turns, this earth,cloud-cocooned and sucked belowthe spindled legs of our mother. She waits there, black... Continue Reading →
I thought I had scurvy,turns out, I had bad oral hygiene. I went to a psychic fair,paid fifty bucks for a spirit animalI could have gotten from any carnyfor twenty dollars in darts and balloons. I bought a shave and a haircut on my birthday.I was twenty five and learned Capone had big eyes,playboys never... Continue Reading →
Such applause — the revelation,the confession — the renamingof Betelguese as a wife’s black eye. Would that I spelled my name proper,that I, once told and brief forgottencould achieve such bandaleered laurels, as to divest with certain and grimexposition, the foibles — the guts of it —capered and rinsed, full well knowing the paintthat hides... Continue Reading →
We had Yugo ham / ham on a string —tough in the closet. Fuck it was cold, like your breathhung for days in the candlelight,no different than that flat ass smokecrushed and shit-scared to rise. We had ham and Bulgarian goatcheese — a winter’s worth of dry,crumbled, a peasant’s worthof pocket knife, salt and thin-sliced... Continue Reading →
There are big words forbig ideas — but,there are small wordsfor everything else,like face, like eye, like lip.Like quiver and tear,there are small sounds,both long and short-waved, pronouncementsinto the flesh of things,like shrug and turnedaway. There is goneand pang and thunder,not fully summedin squandering, andhalf-lived in regret,as if chained was littlemore than an entry,some fiscal... Continue Reading →
So many tales beginin an alley, perhaps,in the rain. A plump ratembarks on a foray, havingplumbed the stink pit of a dumpster,the color of which isindistinguishable from the surrounding brick,puddles, stripped sky, the narrow tube —all that you would expect to findin a tale that beginswith a night, with an alley,with a dumpster, with a... Continue Reading →
When every sound is mere mechanic,when every bird is musicbox —muscular with plucked brass tines… When a wooden doglifts a smoke to my fingers,loaded,pre-sentry, then,the fridge becomes winter,and the fog rolls rotary from abottom mount freezer —becomes haze and low beam. Then, then,in the scuffleof slippers in the brush on a tooth — startledand vague,small... Continue Reading →
I am the dim lightin the upstairs roombehind the curtain. I am not the shadowpassed before it,nor the shadethat funnels it down. No — I am the lurethat tempts a haunting. I am the quarteryou hid in your shoe,the dollar you stolefrom her purse. I am lie and smallbetrayal. I amthe day she walkedaway from... Continue Reading →
