It is so very dark in the ark.
Forgive me Lord for I am afraid.
This lack of light has begun to burn
and I am suffocating, crushed

between pineapples and pigs.

Forty days and the flasks are all empty,
I drank every last drop of your blood.
Forgive me, for I was hungry and afraid.

Your Word was no longer enough.

Such stench and sway.
Such darkness, water and sick.
You promised me rainbows, white doves
and a rose bush when I die.

Bring pails and pliers, you said.
Gather corks, crayons, and screws.
Unwind the rhyme, you said.
Listen carefully: live.

But I am no sage.
I know nothing of verse,
even less of curses.

So I built it
and waited for wind.

You told me that I was your chosen.
That I was to carry the wine.
I believed you.

I should have eaten the pigs.
They're beginning to rot.

Let us fumble, scratch,
slash, claw
through endless Autumn fields

cut from hushed velvet,
hushed velvet and husks.

You say at night
my voice rounds, softens,
grows heavy.

Breeze rustles twigs,
lulls, a lullaby floats over
from the farmhouse.

Fields fill with dust,
bone homes, crackling
with seed ticks and mice.

I think of fruit, the toil
of warm flesh, how it bulged,
slumped off and rotted.

You ask how I could have forgotten
harvest, entered the slumber,
reaped nothing?

The Moon blooms, ripens the sky.

I stop, squat,
trace circles in the sand.

This year I just don't  have the heart.


                                                                -kevin mann

won't save Nine
because her seams have already split.

And anyways,
I saw Nine last week,

she whirled herself off the side of a cliff.

I watched her spin like a pink petal,
severed from bloom by breeze.

She hit the ground crying, a bit broken,
but alright.


Now, she sleeps at the base of a dark hill
tucked in the husk of a rusted sedan.

Nights, she stares at asterisms,
moons, smoke-sagged galaxies.

She thinks of dead light,
long journeys,

and how it is different to be a moon
than a star.

1.

At the first timid tinge of blush in the sky
he emerged, shirtless
from his shelter.
And seeing how the shadows
slipped down into the canyon
he searched, thirst-less,
for a cactus.

He sat at its feet
all morning, legs crossed
like a native. He prayed to the green
scarecrow, begged him to help.
He was worn, like an old stone,
weary from his war
with the sandpaper wind,
and ready to be born again
as pieces.

When the heat reached him,
broke the distant ridge,
he stared at the sun--
until he cried.
Blueberry eyes
bled and burnt black.
He turned away,
just before he went blind.
        
2.

In the white afternoon
when shadows dissolved,
he gazed downward
into the carcass of the creek.
He passed the red hours
by counting piles of bleached bones,
clumps of carbon
that sizzled in the sand.

He counted Seventy seven
fleshless creatures
sleeping beside the dream
of water.

3.

It was dusk when he descended
into the canyon.
He carried a pen light,
a shovel, and a map.
At the bottom he waded
through dust, ran his hands
through cold sand, touched
ripples born of the breeze.

4.

The moon bloomed.
Blue light flooded the canyon.
He smiled. Laid down.
Let the water wash over.

Waking up,
to the clearest head.

Morning thought:
At least, I'm not dead.

Sitting up,
on the edge of the bed.

I think of you,
things that we've said.

Waking up,
from the clearest head.

I walk to the couch.
I go back to bed.

I haven't seen the sun
since the summer you left me.

I've been sliding
through this cave for months.

August left--
cold scold, quick breath.

In September
the trees lost their pages.

November blew
and dumped buckets of tears

on a doorstep that I built
in a dream.

December knew
and darkened her sun

froze,

Waited for snow.

Two small boys stand in the forest,
huddled around the burning husk
of an old go-kart.

A mute snow falls,
sanding away the sharp shapes
of evening.

As the tired light fades
back into frayed rows of black pine,
the boys begin to silently sway.

And soon, they nestle
in nightshade, are bewitched
by the murmur of milk.

Their eyes reflect the Moon.
Not her blush. Her distance.

Transfixed by the twitch of fire,
the still of night, the boys stare
into the metal husk at their feet.

Their hands begin to flutter
as in a death dance, moth-like,
delicate as rice paper cranes.

Small dim creatures,
cliff birds, hollow with desire,
tangled in night drapes
and flame.