Extinct Swamp Light
A woman sells watermelons to veterans without mouths. She leaves the library and sleeps in her car. Not far away, a coyote prays beside a dying man, both so patient not to howl. The plague doctor’s eyes are canine, reptilian. She loans him her skull for a wholesale price. She lights a candle that laughs at her squirm. The pier here is what we fear the most.
Sexually Transmitted Spinach, or Awaiting Rabies on Ice
There was a traffic jam on the way to the landfill. A hill of bad batteries. Body cast bathing. When I wake, my last name is embroidered in the pillow on your therapy couch. All who sat collapsed into gardens like dying inside the diner. In your cavern of standards, the toothless horse exhales. Customs becomes a cough. An old pierogi in a Polish gut. A cold war formed between the two four star hotels. Years later, a clown buys a high chair and a space heater and eats a deer. The feathers were everywhere. One hundred husbands who want my blue shoes. Maroon moon rocks consumed by rude gods. A stick bug eats a pill bug as the slug watches from the tree. I fire an entire town. They love me. They’re free. Martha’s stars apologize for missing the rain. I open the world’s first book and look away. Many of my best friends rap against the clocktower’s window. I boil my compass and call my mom.
Worm
The wormhole in my skull is aging in reverse. It’s the pacing of the wolf that attracts the famished. Packrat is the Latin term for hurried unlearning. In this globe of grown poster children, skimming for fish in the dirt is a present.
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Benjamin Niespodziany is a Chicago-based writer and circus enthusiast. A former Olive Garden waiter, his debut collection of poetry was released last November through Okay Donkey and his debut novella, Cardboard Clouds, is out now with X-R-A-Y.