Charnal slumber in the Summer of unmitigated stench, one electric outlet, and an undeviated septum.    

 

This was the 4th of July.
Spent on floorboards, ancestral murder, blood of once living rodents, waxed flat. 
Red blob swirls, sunk onto cold exit pipe: a small ghost. 
Is it mine?

Precisely one achievement, spawned from duelling soliloquies, fighting a fight that could not be won.

Burning flies by candle light. 
And out they go.
That summer, like all others.
The monumental inability, the
impermissible contentment.
The silenced fireflies and bats.

The blood flushing out of stabbed ribs; the 4th of July. The day that was the same as all other days.

          (linoleum cut, monotype, on paper, 2019)