I am a wounded creature impossible to see — until

Phil Hall

  I am a wounded creature impossible to see — until
sleep charges & scatters mobs of wordplay — anthems of rhyme

  my innards are a butcher's nightmare — mobiles of pudding
I ride or do the deadman's float in a visceral parade & see

  my parents as kids wrapped in quilts that smell pissy — sockless
in rubbers in the red snow they watch themselves burnt out again

  pleated shadow-buttresses go open-gilled into flame
stiff studio portrait postcards lift pathetic fists of ash

  & I can only pretend to help
by catching in me the legendary fur-bearing trout

  when I nudge its baked fillets with my folding fork
I feather apart the soot-wafers of a burning photo album

  leaking & eating the lit parts of so many faces
lost in the life-of-the-party-until-crossed dark

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

Phil Hall's works copyright © to the author.