the ceiling fan churns its one ***** joke over and over,
a laugh like a swarm of flies stuck in the syrup of August,
and I’m counting the tiles on the floor—thirty-seven,
thirty-seven, thirty-seven—but they keep slipping into the drain,
which gargles back a wet facsimile of my voice, you’re alright, you’re alright,
as if the house itself is trying to swallow the lie whole.
outside, the neighbor’s kid tapes a cardboard wing to a sparrow’s corpse,
whispers almost as he lobs it into the wind, where it arcs
like a skipped coin before plunging into the gutters,
and isn’t that the way of it?
we keep sewing parachutes from plastic bags
then wonder why the sky feels like a landfill.
certain things would be extremely hilarious if they weren’t happening to me:
the way the grocery clerk’s have a nice day curdles into a threat
when the eggs crack in my hands, yolks bleeding like misplaced suns,
or how the therapist’s couch unfurls its jaws,
a slow yawn of upholstery, as she scribbles normal, normal, normal
in a language that looks like static, sounds like a bone grinding.
I tried to burn the calendar but the flames just licked the numbers cleaner,
March, April, May glowing neon in the ash, a chain of empty theaters
where my shadow keeps rehearsing a play no one attends—
third act: a man digs a hole to bury his laughter
and strikes a aquifer of static, cold enough to shatter teeth.
the news says a satellite’s gone mute, spinning hymns into the vacuum,
and I swear sometimes the phone wires hum its same desolate frequency,
a chorus of did you forget, did you forget, did you forget
while the fridge light flickers code: the milk’s gone sentient, the milk’s gone sentient.
I drink it anyway. let it colonize my blood. let it write its manifesto
in the vernacular of spoiled things.
if I press my ear to the wall, I can hear the pipes translating my breath
into a dialect of rust—no nouns, just the shudder of hinges—
and isn’t that the punchline? the whole world’s a ventriloquist
dummy choking on its own script, arms jerking toward a heaven
that’s just a billboard of a heaven, paper peeling, glue gone sour,
and the dog down the street howls at the smell,
howls and howls and howls,
like it’s trying to ***** a galaxy,
like it’s the last church bell
left ringing in the throat
of a mute city—
(and the fan spins,
and the tiles dissolve,
and the joke’s still
written in a tongue
I can’t stop swallowing).
2025, Lost Lounge Massacre