"NIGHTMARE ABOUT ELEVATORS" by Angelo Maneage
NIGHTMARE ABOUT ELEVATORS
a skull tattooed on my neck
409 foam on the steps on the carpet you know
that Rice Krispies cereal explosive probiotic
material / it is conclusive in the walkway
a head has exploded there is a mess all over the stairs
we are going to have to vacuum up /
my brain / I have to look for that
furry piece of the vacuum for seats
full of fur to find quarters under a month long meanwhile
we all have blood on our fingers everybody in the house
I call grandma to help and she picks up the phone
like rocks how / she holds pieces of brain my sock gets wet with then
freezes it so it doesn’t go bad.
in an unsafe drift there are sharp edges underneath wet rags.
animal food grease baby fingerprints the things we wiped down before dinner
Used with permission of Ghost City Press.
© 2021 Angelo Maneage.
Angelo Maneage is a poet and book designer from Northeast Ohio. He’s the author of THE IMPROPER USE OF PLATES. You can visit him at angelomaneagethewebsite.com.