by BJ Soloy
We’re not just hunted for sport or food; we’re hunted for light.
The light here is broken, with a certain ferocity,
a stutter bred in captivity. As we wait, patient,
light shoots through the glass & glassed light sprays & stains
the walls. After hacking up our
savior’s name, I’m so hungry.
Honey in the skull.
I address the world’s largest landfill, all bluster & raven cover.
Talking to this weather is like driving
through Indiana on the interstate or flipping
through
the cable channels on my recently widowed mom’s mounted TV.
I used to draw pictures. I used
to cry rain. The thunder & I
once slept together
in a borrowed car in a Kansas rest stop. Did I already say this?
I truly can’t remember. I promised I would
never do this or I promised I would
do exactly this. I honestly can’t. Either way, I’m ready to empty
just as a muttering breeze takes a knee,
humming its lustral hymn, coughing on
the green.
I gather it all & drag it like a father I plan on burying into the awake
& humorless late morning. I sigh, laugh at
myself, & take a tender final breath, one of
thousands.
BJ Soloy’s Our Pornography & other disaster songs was selected by Ocean Vuong as the winner of the Slope Editions Book Prize. He’s also the author of Selected Letters, a chapbook from New Michigan Press. He lives in Kansas City and has poems in places like Third Coast, LIT, Colorado Review, FIELD, Another Chicago Magazine, and Forklift, Ohio.