I HAVE A FIST ❋ JC Bouchard

Nothing is absolute

The sun reflects everything

Even itself

And my memory of your hands has limits

And my mother has the breath to feed the earth

And her lover has the blood to sow the soil

Skin, bone, minuscule knuckle fucks

Silent ashtrays skidding the table

Closed doors that never lock

He has a fist

And a crowbar

And knives of time

Not an open chest

Walls blacker than dirt

What grows makes you sick

What makes you sick is worth taking

But never revealing

The branches of birch trees are flints

They spark white in the backyard wind

A mausoleum of dissolution

Near the jagged bluff

Televisions and boulders and voices

I have been calmer inside coffee burns

And I have a fist

Feeling the carpet for bits of stone and glass

I learn how to speak with rebellion

Carvings in plastic tongues

Absolution

It takes a monument to signal ghosts

To separate constancy from immortality

Before night I find a snake in the bird bath

After the kitten trapped in kitchen chair cages

I show it to you on a spike

Sprayed open in my closed hand

How far it flies pitched into the crag

Sharp teeth that never grow

Cloudy eyes inverted into bone

Tuffs of weed in its tail

The garden is made of miracle edges

You mark the layers in hate

Teach the roots to rest

The cat has a paw

Its mouth finally shut

But it is not buried

And it lingers in the air

And it follows itself home

And you beat the truth out of me