Desire is a ghost tessellating the path that carries you to this shrine. Fumes dissipate at your approach, thrashing against the sky to thicken in your throat: you, who have stalled on this very same spot along this very same road, snake a hose through the tear in my hull until it meets the overcooked gob of flesh where my will used to be, & you wrap your lips to the end flapping like an alien sex appendage & siphon until midnight erupts in a gush, hot & tacky. Look: footprints in the dust, a nest of discarded vipers writhing in a culvert. No one thinks to press an ear to my body. Listen to that purr: even lightning can sizzle inside a shuttered mouth.
Ed is a teacher and the author of the poetry chapbook Sauteing Spinach With My Aunt (Desert Willow Press, 2018). Other words can be found in Water/Stone Review, Hippocampus Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, Sky Island Journal, Trampset, One Teen Story, Dreams Walking, & more. Readers can follow him on Twitter (@EdDoerrWrites), read his TV blog (overstuffeddvr.com), and visit his website (eddoerr.com).