ledge like a cool glass of water providing relief from the bowels of august, i can never get enough of that breeze bathing my skin so intimately unlike the callousness of your hands. throw up the sash and it’s all right there beyond me. the escape, the relief, the utter end. my father …
clothespin they’d dangle like tragic tightrope walkers, splintery legs hooked onto the line, random breeze adding decadence to the danger before my eyes. would they drop and fall, these solitaire risk-takers, for what else destined would be their way? with knobby knuckles grandma added to the heart-stopping spectacle, digging deep into a stained cloth …
control squeeze squeeze a little tighter, so the collar constricts and so do we without tender. what swells beneath skin, a rhythmic denial in need of appeasement and release, so what wounds deeper, the vessel or the tongue. the safe word, we are one, but are we really squeeze squeeze a …
gasoline the hard stuff will of course power your throat but strip your gut. you think i joke until you meet the burly irish lads with bludgeoned noses where the red rivers run through and laughter chokes the horse. pressed against momma’s teat, they surely didn’t believe life finds a way of circling …
susurrus that’s the rub, i hear nothing of you inside this cacophony head. a coward would ask where have you gone but a valiant knight would fall upon his sword. there you go eviscerating my heart before it tastes blade. somewhere in town the 6:30 train gallops without its mount but that was …
feast the plates have more space at the table now, the bellies more food to be fed. take the extra chair back to the basement. i filled it with air anyhow. my absence will be spoken of now until christmas but i gave the early gift of self back and the easy truth …
legerdemain slowly circling, slowly circling, tongue flicking out, flicking in, fringes of my cheek an old tasseled rug and syllables whistling through it like kettle steam, don’t leave, don’t leave us, air rushes from the hole through which you hooked me, i am hushed, our vision kept close to vest, blush of our …
iridescent before your eyes, i share nothing, hint nor glimmer, merely a manipulation, a twisted play of your own perception. believe me weak? i am weak. think me raw? i’ll soak your laces in all i spill. strike the chords your ears will hear. pluck the strings your core responds. understand i have …
sewer again it is taxed by the latest deluge. this whirlpool of muck and debris and oppression has spun downhill for years. my throat iron oxide like the grill created to hold it back. hold it back, hold it back (please hold it back). it’s those sliver words and dismissive exasperations that find …
countertop dark surfaces don’t reveal the mess. her own words, crumbled in their staleness and left again to redirect my demeanor. i mean, can you believe her? the unfortunate answer yes. roiled within thunder, there has always been someone to rob the fork from my tongue. lashless and listless, anger withdraws and i …
Joseph A. Pinto 