The Blunting Wind

The lion of the paw’s left hand
arrives a blunting wind; an orb
de-globe’d, intact among, spins
in a cot, handy house nearby. In
inks the tint among the spine tree
bust, gnawn granite-like upon soft
curtains motoring wrong this love’s
beholden—this earthened weapon’s
next. In dreams I balance the tweezer
en pointe, legs outstretched, angles de la
ballerine enforced, sufficient with the deep
squirrel’s feet, the freeze that brought me unto
the tomb, the teeth. My head on your head, bower-
ghost, weep-testicles out the crime, nipple the bone-
shot sea. Cleanse your house in the great unknowing
of the vain details like winters that mimic good skin:
“Denmark, Denmark” cooed the arrowhead rocked
against the table. “No!—Spain!” re-insurrects the
danger. This is to be the cutting year to lactate
rough dosages the one thing backside trees
ignite: the ill-buried ringmaster’s hat or
gloves dressed in fleck-rumple white
stallions twisting his crypt, losing
a taste for the gr’panned funeral,
the time unripe for his favorite
cigarette, his wonder-whiskey,
his fatback cheese. Why, then,
when thus covered, the baffling
self that is what was so, the labia
lens I view through my depths and
re-launch rested codicil upon its legs
following room to room the dream again
gut-wrapped in clip-knives-breath-alleys-time-
jars valley-tipped upon rain-walks would I suddenly
like not to age without? The dead bird now a glazen cage
upon my Lady’s lap, tortoise-wrapped to keep her hot,
the intelligence of the horse’s crepuscular damage
unwinged, burlap’ed. I am but a portal: some
equal time-law of the self de-foreign’d to
breath—my statue, the manageress of
spoons, devolves, water-waifed all
night in nights of Night’s amens.

St. Century

Anodynes of theft and memory’s feeding
tongues all neatly razored at the root defy

our lampblack salt. Cats vain the winter sky;
flies nestle, sup beneath nails for cruelty,

that simple onion cut. O Rage of the Isolate —
the sun lets go the air, the animal-flower unfolds;

and if we were to float, the cats would not mind at all.

Matt Dennison is the author of Kind Surgery from Urtica Press (Fr.) and Waiting for Better from Main Street Rag Press. His poetry has appeared in Verse Daily, Rattle, Bayou Magazine, Redivider, and Cider Press Review, among others. His fiction has appeared in ShortStory Substack, House of Long Shadows, The Blue Crow (Aus), Prole (UK), The Wondrous Real and Story Unlikely. He has also made poetry videos with Michael Dickes, Marc Neys, Jutta Pryor & Marie Craven.