ghost roast

ghosts could be bad enamel
shaved off the world as soon as people age out
baby teeth dropped for the next zeitgeist
some of us splinter from the socket
inevitably becoming esophageal clutter
choked down darker states of matter
slipping through the dentist’s fingers
a cavity in a set of dentures
cell energy waste beleaguered by time
catheter blockage clogged right
where an uninterrupted infection would do
a snake that can’t escape its own shed
overgrown hide hindering digestion
a murderous tourniquet around the sex
stunting reproduction
death in its flayed momentum
anti-circulation pockmarked souls
lost like crayons in a casket
parading through your place of birth
rebooted each time with worse effects
subconscious repeat
memory made ataxic

fear the day
whoever’s haunting you
puts their clothes back on

off the breeze

skinned alive inside a grocery sack
anthracitic bulge hung
off the breeze
manicured into coagulation
bobbing for maggots
with your own fatality
some butcher shop’s overzealous flier
forecast of sacrifices to come
the clobbered volubility of existence
stitches you upon a neighborhood
like a baggy graft

fanatical natures accredit you
still I swat the jangling birds from their flight
pin them beneath a shovel
spouts polished along my porch
for conversational aid

rotate elsewhere
a sentience beyond mutuality
ranked sublevel from threadbare approval
reject of the already oppressed
become my boogeyman fertilizer
sprawled like a suicide across a spotlight
stabbed well enough to give
your shit a stout diameter

panting such an aftermath
no home could stand us
stocked up on burgers
conversing with the mattress
where our siblings were kempt in utero
as if the sauce of their abortions
might scramble into some tone
deaf version of a family

bleep within your person
pillaged of extra guys
fined the fee of a feather
toyed in the bible’s extra soupy leather
may those who wish to be compensated by god
suffer uninterruptedly
animal skeletons mating
let’s make the Satanic Panic look like Disneyworld
high off one-eight seven
a lambent blearing rainbowed in
stained glass windows underground
display a god a day
aborted in its stead
new ones growing from the stem
every object is god flayed
every good idea degrades
once put in practice

contagious laughter of a wound
that doesn’t weep but grows its gap
between anything we see
a bulbous facilitation grouped in shadow
down a metabolic slump so sleep can fast
layaway pube on what laws flabbergast
most people stick their hemorrhoid in your ear
and called it a rule
monuments to gruel
twist a screw into the 2D surface of the sun
entitative crinkle bailing through our veins
we ate the cane that can’t
emblazoned in repetition
sutures blipped across distension
eructed blitzkrieg laughs
no need for epitaphs

Sean Kilpatrick’s writing is published or forthcoming in Boston Review, Bomb, Vice, LIT, NERVE, New York Tyrant, sleepingfish, Diagram, and evergreen review.

About the illustrator: Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is a Jar, The Phoenix, and other journals. Edward is also a published poet.