from “Impersonal Rainbow & The Bisexual Purge”

---

Canted Circles

I ate pleasantries
and wasted a whole house
on miniature catastrophes,
my one, two, three
apologies to sleep,
may we reunite
behind the flower
that greets the desperation
I sit with in the rain
legislating a personhood
more wanted than me,
the small font
of a dog’s voice
hnnn hnnn hnnn
by the ladder to a treehouse
darkened by clouds
digesting thunder
scrolling through streets
like a prosecutor
looking for someone to humiliate.

Abandonment and Animation

You make up
the better part
of an expression
that shuffles across
the face of
this perennial bath
in I-wonder-what-
I-did-to-my-god-
to-deserve-this-
infusion-of
suffering-within-
such-inconsequential-
delivery-systems-
as-being-looked-atness.

From Impersonal Rainbow & The Bisexual Purge by Paul Killebrew.
Copyright © 2023 Paul Killebrew.
Reprinted with permission of Canarium Books.