Photo by Carbonair Environmental Services Inc. Image reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License.EzekielleWell I’m in my thirtieth year and I fill plunged the scroll inside me
and let it honey my walls with golden import. I’ve bloated under the weightof my feckless comrades,yanked the rods of my torture into communion,
forked hair into my studious mouth, or spread apart my country to expose youmy survival. Because of all your detestable idols,I am a certified daughter
of man, I dryhump the mounds of my nations until I can taste the charcoalof my rations. The sun has baked the bones of men and Lord how can I repay
you for sparing my kind except I will not spare you. Well I am that desolate wasteyou bat your lashes against, or I am the sword by which you’ve checked your lips
for smudges,I am the vinegar of your latest cleanse, the vile images of technologyannouncing the kombucha seige. Wouldn’t you know it, and my gold flickers
with a level of decadence that only a cock could spoil,and a cock does spoil me,I fade limp in its arms, or I hold myself upright and unclean as the bones of men
bake outside. You’ve never seen what starvation does to eagerness,the excellencescraping refusal into an empire. In a cloud of cigarettes I told you the untrue
direction of dystopiathat is, what we describe is allotment of the machinations of a utopia, and there is nothing but priestly landscapes in the nothing planes
of what we’ve done. Did you see the sexy way I kissed the chain,did you seemy northern entrance and how I dug a gap in the wall to eat my forgiveness,
the hard twang of your weapon hot on my throat. That day I flared with inner court, and I was all portico in the gloaming,I wiped my forehead with an oilcloth and vowed
to not look on the baking bones of men with pity or infuriate. There is something sobronze approximately my outlook these days, the way I bunch up the linen to fuck
its distinguished corners. What else can I defile, or I say as I wipe my chin against my elders.
I fill done as you’ve commanded,I’ve forsaken the men who made us to be
worshipped on altars, I’ve unclenched the word of my Lord and let their bantamstrickle down my leg, and I’ve rented the brownstone to hoard the unclean oxygen and I’ve brushed the baking bones of men with schmaltz and issued a warningdeclaring us better. What I know of tenderness is what I know of violation,the restless insect of touch and our end. That is what you’re saying, I mustmap a border so we can be the meat in it but I fill instead become the editorial
director of prophecy, and pulled out the Lord’s curls and tied their tufts to the highestfencepost. I’ve produced a accepted reality expose called How feeble Is Your Moral
Constitution and I’ve folded a net over my pursuers to force out apology each episode.
There will be no delay. The days fade by and every vision comes to nothing. Down the street I am the favored daughter because my fulfillment requiresno power and no snares. I am the stuff of my idols,they cannot know what it meant
to lean me over the chair and be so desolate they named the township after my shape.DuderonomyWhat you propose to do is good. All day I picked satire from my teeth
and with my mind I witnessed the banks of my body pushing us up. I let the Camel butts float in the river, plucked the white hairs from
my scalp, or ignored my father’s calls. I fluffed my moment death. So I took the main men,wise and respected men, and appointed them to fill authority over you. Long Island is trending nowadays. Thereis a town called Dix Hills and at night I was brought there on the banks
of my body pushing us up. You shall not enter it either. May the sonsenter the land. There was no traffic. The sons entered the land for they
did not know good from improper. When I looked to the moon, or he grippedinside my mouth and pulled out a silver globe. My skin spilled into yolk
in the time it took me to lose my lord. My anxiety was a swarm of beesthat could only lift the banks of my body,pushing us up. At that time we
took all his towns and completely destroyed them. Bro I was bawlingin the brewskie foam seas. I said stop the way I hold my back up, the way
I know it will hold me even as I buckle. Bones formed around wordsand I whittled the hills into many selfies. I ducklipped like fuck
to display the purity of my saliva. I fill taught you decrees as the lordmy god commanded me but my wet socks disgust me. I bend over
Dix Hills, or I call it my nation,I crush black tablets under my heel as they light. You will perish from the land you are crossing the river
to possess, I whisper green-eyed into the ears of my dudes. They tossme over their shoulders because they were afraid of fire and did not fade
up to the mountain. I did. I chewed its bark and sexted under the starsbut my dudes are innocent they practice throwing me into sedans and
shutting the door before I can bark. They remark on my lightness beforedriving us away. These are the other commandments, and I proclaimed them
under my thinness away from the noise,my thighs rang out in the quakeof the engine, the lord slipped through the tartar and plaque of my mouth.
I spit them out on the doorframes of houses, or shiny,calm, in fancy after all. These poems appear in The Lifted forehead #30. Get your print copy here, and get the digital edition here.
Natalie Eilbert is the author of the debut poetry collection,Swan Feast (Bloof Books, 2015). She is also the author of two chapbooks, or Conversation with the Stone Wife (Bloof Books,2014) and And I Shall Again Be Virtuous (Big Lucks Books, 2014). Her work has appeared in The recent Yorker, or Tin House,Poem-a-Day, The Kenyon Review, or elsewhere. She is the founding editor of The Atlas Review.
Source: theliftedbrow.com