Resplendent, spear gored,
the wedding guest would still be shouting if he hadn’t
come within that single fathom.
Over you go,
the both of you, into the photo
on the guidebook’s dust jacket flap.
The volcano has either already erupted or is just about to,
smoke stacks poking anachronistically through the power grid.
Somebody ought to tan your hide, he’d said, so you sunned
in your endocrine until the warm jets thrust up
through the ice caps.
Next thing you know,
you’ve got to bail out an ocean w/ a copper kettle
or find higher ground
in the otherwise vacant lot where a man
wants to show you his underground helium tank.
There’ll be black balloons for your panic room
if you’ll toss the bathwater on the other side
of the tracks & leave the baby
to gnaw the wallpaper. You scratch each other’s backs
even though you haven’t been waxed
since well before the quarantine. The last time
this happened,
you gave up once the pit bull
mauled your finger.
There’s an ellipsis where the fire road should’ve been,
a bus stop on top of the mountain & then an avulsion
soaked in salt.
Chris McCreary lives in Philadelphia. He is the author of five full-length poetry collections and the chapbook Maris McLamoureary’s Dictionnaire Infernal, a collection of poems about demons co-authored w/ Mark Lamoureux. You can find Chris on Instragram @chrisixnay.
RESURRECTION mag 