i will introduce you to my drug dealer’s chihuahua
buy you cocaine
cut your lines
pour your jack and coke
buy you all the flowers
because of a promise i made to a little kid
i will hold your hand on the boat
i will hit you in the face with a champagne bottle and you will laugh
i will make them call you my wife
even though you are someone else’s wife
even though you will never be my wife.
old man you die in new ways each day
you leave a trail of pretty girls in your wake
they break brittle and bleak
hypothermic blue in blizzards
of bleach blonde murder sprees
when you sneeze
they weep their years
shed their memories
like an elephant stampede
you do not forget
they do not forgive
the air that you breathe is weak in the knees
swoon!
you preach some queer trapeze language
you languish in the tropics
sustained by warm beer and malaria.
there was a time
when we didn’t care
about equality or brevity
or about anybody but ourselves
we forgot how to be selfish
in harmless ways
forgot how to fuck in hallways
like stupid birds our plans
stay buried in history
incomplete fossil records
of my cock in your hand
choked to death
by your wedding band
collect dust with two headed babies
in jars on some dusty shelf
in another country
where they speak pidgin
with hot wet mouths.
W.M. Butler is the Editor-in-Chief of H.A.L. Publishing and co-founder of online journal, Far Enough East. His work has appeared most recently online at Unshod Quills and Cease, Cows. Butler’s work in print can be found in the short story anthology, Party Like it’s 1984 and will appear in the upcoming United Verses, an anthology of English/Chinese poetry in translation.
–Art by Denis Olivier
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