Neko

roadkill

the parking lot saint, haloed

in the streetlamp limelight;

good enough for gore.

blessed be the scavengers, come

the angels to feast on squirming

snakes of gut and bloating heart

limp veins strangle

the bleed through the pores, nails

dipped in rot and festering asphalt

maggoted marrow a feast

as hooked beaks and dull teeth

bow their heads to carcass

haloed in the streetlamp

limelight; good enough

to burn

gardening

to start, i reach

my hand past my teeth

and down my throat

to reach the words caught

between my ribs,

untangle them from the trapping nerves,

careful of the red between,

scoop out a bit of bile

as i pass the stomach

to fill the white space.

drawing out, check the backs

of my teeth for any stray

metaphors stuck beneath enamel,

careful of the worming nerves

at the root of it all.

camera // focus

A pixel is a sort of fiction, gentler

than a fly, that on occasion may end up

swarming in the hundreds and millions and become something

like an image, which is something like a corpse

in the way that it stays.

A television is the way all images bend towards a center,

a black hole sucking up stars. Electron beams

and electron guns get pulled off target. Rastrum, rastri:

a drag-hoe, a rake. Raster sweeps through the square,

churning phosphors from the glass.

A camera flips it all on its head; lens,

focus it all in to the tiny eye at the center. Blink,

and it's there forever--film grain, compression,

bad lighting and all. Change the focus but don't change

the lens (we need that). Change the focus but don't

look away.

Pantoum for Empty Discord Servers

people still live here.

as old messages from a you-that-isn't-anymore

as link rot and decaying jpegs from people no longer there

as digital ghosts wandering their digital cemetery

as old messages from a you-that-isn't-anymore

as messages from deleted_user_088eb16f3692

as digital ghosts wandering their digital cemetery

as announcements of things gone years ago

as messages from deleted_user_088eb16f3692

as names changed twenty times since

as announcements of things gone years ago

but ghosts still linger

as names changed twenty times since

as link rot and decaying jpegs from people no longer there

but ghosts still linger

people still live here.