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Captain
Is such an abrasive term
Call me zebra instead
Call me every other weekend
Salute the system
Or form a mutiny
As disciples of Moby ****
Just be sure rank and file
Are futile

Everything now is beautiful

Rainbirds
Caged in your barbed-wire heart
Jaded feather friends
In migration
Tasting shapes
And drawing blood
From artistic wings
As freedom of flyway must
Still belong to the rule

Everything now is beautiful

Hopscotch
On sorted sidewalks
Ride the escalator instead
Up one floor
To the mezzanine
That panders to
The perversions of quiet girls
Innocence outshines
Experience
When the hemisphere is
Short on lifeboats
And late for school

Everything now is beautiful

The missing world
Beneath our feet
Is what the ocean
Tells us about ourselves
"From swerve of shore
To bend of bay"
Check the notes
In the margin
Postcards and maps
Depicting these dazzle ships
And the angry waters
They chart
Are always of
Skinny-dipping
Sea vessels
Her mons and ponds
Face-up
And full frontal

Everything now is beautiful

Dove taking
Swan keeping
We've power against dreams
We've articles of war
So this line is expendable
An anguish languish
Deep deep down
Turning with the wave
Against the sound
Where we sailed on from one love
To find another
As usual

Omnes una manet nox
(One night is awaiting us all)
 Aug 2020 b e mccomb
Em Glass
Water and wind build the air
up thick and the siren slices it
clean across the middle.

Across the suburbs and towns
people gather their books and
their computers and hunker down

in bathtubs and basements, tucked
into hallways with their feet splayed
amongst their families' shoes,

listening to dark skies and music
and other sounds, working by flashlight
while the fireflies drown.
the midwest and its tornadoes
In mere moments,
it seems, I will be
wrapped under stale
hospital sheets;
throat scratching from
a breathing tube,
a hollow body where
organs have been
sawed away.

I still love the womb
that only cultivates
funerals, would keep
it forever inside
if it had allowed.

I think of the cyclical
nature of hope—
how those who cradle
around pretend to
not notice the quiet
decay of one’s body,
promising me
there’s still semblance
of a woman residing
here.

-Kathryn Paige // The Hysterectomy
Haven't posted in awhile. Haven't written in awhile. Happy to be back.
 Aug 2020 b e mccomb
nivek
who knows where the flood comes from
but when it happens
you just got to keep on paddling
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