At the Conclusion of the Hometown Tour
Reading the Braille of your gooseflesh with my teeth they become a music box plinking as if carved from tin but I wanted to chew the timbre I wanted a whole symphony to pour from your pores as I passed Knuckles traverse the space between each rib my tear ducts dispense fireflies glowing so brightly the confused moonlight tries to mount them but the whole scene is a perfect concert with Dante’s head aflame in the courtyard laurels smoldering everyone swarming souls flailing excuse me, miss, your past is showing – This structure is too small to have housed whole mythologies a whole calculus of humans folding socks in front of the television for decades while animals roasted in the oven awaiting our forks our lips our bowels but it has and it does. Climbing the stairs with feathers glued to my elbows and knees I remember like déjà vu when these walls were wider this ceiling higher the doorknob not so tiny I have to grip it with a buttonhole the plaster cracks always like fireworks in bas relief No boys were allowed above the second stair so I traced pink areolas with my thumbs on the living room couch while my family finished dinner in the next room my face pressed into her neck like it was my lilac fort the divine weight surrendering itself into my impatient palm creases my father lifts the pot roast to his mouth. Megan Neville is a writer and teacher based in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in English Journal, Whiskey Island, Belt Magazine, Tilde, Barren Magazine, Into the Void, and others. Her chapbook Rust Belt Love Song will be released in early spring 2019 by Game Over Books. Find her on Twitter @MegNev. |