46


Is this the place for the miracle cure?

Here, sitting around this veneer table,

where we all hate each other, like family.

Like we know, which we do, the sad, sad truth.

Like it's thanksgiving in a hotel room.


We'd better spend our time on other lies:

chasing flesh in the corners of this tomb;

finding the airshaft by following the flies;

     blinking at the black night and cured by rue.


Better we two saved, than all of us dull.

Better two of us born, than all of us still.

Better we are spawned from these doors and halls;

the asylum rescinds the naked law.



first published in the anthology Devouring the Green (Jaded Ibis, 2015)