(Kindra M. Austin)

Every morning, I wake up. I keep
waking
up.
And
sometimes I’m angry at my opened eyes, cos sometimes
brittle fingernails
scratching inside of my skull, they split and rip and bleed and blood
leaks and shorts my circuits.
Not enough to kill me
dead,
just enough to kill my will. And so I stare up at the ceiling,
counting back the years, the weeks, the goddamned days I’ve
given in and left myself to
dreadful
entertainments. Circus tents of made up horrors
dressed in homemade gore—red corn syrup and hot dogs and
mushy elbow macaroni.
What am I? Incubator for the fly.
bzzzzzz
I am infestation,
lying.

Nighttime calls, and so I answer,
cos that’s where I
fuckin belong.
Inside
black ink
sky—where nerve endings scream in silence of
outer space.

(Christine E. Ray)

Every morning, I wake up. I keep
waking
up,
fighting cobwebs of…