BRUSH ASIDE THE NOISE WITH LOCKS OF MATTED HAIR
On this planet of people who nip at me, I managed to find you. And now you’re gone. I don’t remember what day it is but the rain keeps draining in from the sea and spits on the cliffs. I’m tired as the rain that falls in the sea. There is a field of dachshunds running towards the dirty sock of the sun setting. Blood cells falling over themselves to make it to the ends of my veins where it thins out and tries to swim back. They try so hard it’s pretty and sometimes they make it. Did I say they? I meant we. I meant I want to hire you to take photos of shadows on walls. I want to name them all Sick Horse. I want to care for them, hold water in my cupped hands for them, pick windfall apples from the wet grass to lift to those enormous teeth. I hear a window open in a room below. I hope it’s you, breaking in, with a brick.
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Christopher Citro is the author of The Maintenance of the Shimmy-Shammy (Steel Toe Books, 2015), and his poems appear or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Best New Poets 2014, and Prairie Schooner.
Dustin Nightingale lives in West Hartford, Connecticut. His poetry has been or will be published in journals such as new ohio review, Margie, Cimarron Review, Portland Review, and decomP.
Other poems from this series have been published or will appear shortly in journals such as Hotel Amerika, Diagram, Zone 3, Another Chicago Magazine, The Chattahoochee Review, Whiskey Island, Hobart, and elsewhere.
The Boiler 