Every Cell in this Country Looks Like a Choice You Can Walk In and Out Of
Does a man with no intentions know he means
you only harm? If lodged in the scar were a pearl
of such precise damage no tongue could lift it—
Either I am talking about my ex-lover or
I am talking about the president. Every
choice in this cell looks like a country
he can walk in and out of. Here was a kind
of kingdom. If I call him "King," then he is.
If he is late, it is the Waste Kingdom. If a king
there's elsewhere a slave and, too, a mule
the grass can't grow quickly enough into
the mouth of. Beneath this same pulled-
tooth moon I drop my body like an axe-
head into a bed of blue-lipped weeds
the king's highway rides its joys through.
A crisis at my navel lifts the century out
of turn. In the buzz of his country's decay
I give a form to the chaos. He loves to say
he hates me, meaning his need to use me
confuses him. I want to say I love me
in the language of a place where
it is possible; this is a stark mood with few
conditions. The kingdom wears a skirt
of woods, busy insects to signify health,
a flag crested with & Fuck That MF. Yes,
that should have been its whole name.
Yes, I am delectable, and therefore
a spiral of buzzards descends in helix
or a whole horde of countrymen perfects
the custom of puzzling my flesh. He licks
the femur of a thing that many hands ago
was me; he says, "If you want to be enough
be both." He is talking about my bullet-
casket carcass, or he is talking about how
fuckable I looked laid roadside in red.
Copyright Credit: Justin Phillip Reed, "Every Cell in this Country Looks Like a Choice You Can Walk In and Out Of" from The Malevolent Volume. Copyright © 2020 by Justin Phillip Reed. Reprinted by permission of Coffee House Press, www.coffeehousepress.org.
Source: The Malevolent Volume (Coffee House Press, www.coffeehousepress.org, 2020)