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.