I thought if I could swallow the stars
I’d be as beautiful as the evening sky
I tried one night    with fireflies
They burned my throat
Their legs striking at soft flesh
But my skin did not glow
No moon crawled from my eye sockets
I was left with corpses in my stomach
I soon learned I would only ever be
A cemetery

It’s strangely busy around the deathbeds,
as well it’s my last nightshift of the year.
I try to make no noise, can you hear me?
Push my hand, if you can, move a limb.
Your breath is so slow, please keep going,
monitors flash in time with the ventilator.
I’ll control the pupils, I know it’s blinding.
No one goes with their sparkling old eyes,
we are usually fading before we are dying.

The irony of a life unshackled -
seemingly an advocate for freedom.

But only to find its beats forlorn,
as it serviced payments for past follies’


ransom.

I Found God

I found God in a Baptist Church
in Milwaukee.
Faith,  small hands and
scratched bibles.

Warm cookies.

The delicate and the children.
Their names in coded
words on the skin under

my arms. .

Dedicate: the
day to the great E. Perience.

There is a new Age
coming.

I smoke a cigarette.

God arrived in fancy clothes.

Women dressed, frown.
Still voices in the

Wilderness

Witness the Beloved
baptism of perfumed
sinners

I smoked for them all.
My fee for being previously

Apostate.


Caroline Shank

primal cave
warm
coals glow
in an iron grate
dream lives flicker
in dancing flames
hatches battened
around the ramparts
of terraced council home
droplets run
on window panes
coursing rivers
to the sea
we are alone
suspended natural animation
with only ourselves
to blame