By Matt Wenzel
In the airstream & the engine, in the de-icing,
juniper, & fumes, you, ghost of x-mas, are there to
keep us from falling. For five hundred years I wet my
lips with zero kisses; I held this pose for 900 winters;
my flesh sought only you, El Niño, for 730,000 days. But now
nine of my heads—this one I drowned; this one I severed with an
open pin; this one cut by windshield; this one starved; this one got
pinched off with a leather belt; this one, by a rail; this one
quit; this one, beheaded; this one I froze off like a wart—
rot in my roll aboard in the overhead compartment with
so much to say, not a lot of breath left to say it.
Today, I go to make a wish for all of them.
Undercarriage, tarmac, drive shaft, constant-
velocity joints, dull glitter falling in stream
white light. A deer hangs from a tree, agape from
xyphoid to groin, heartless & anusless, swinging &
yellow gold illuminated by your halogen, our scratchy
zombie ray. The teeth on the mandibles & craniums gristbite
against the silence & their blackened tongues probe the
briny cranberry mist we sail in. I dream unzip their
cold lips in the house prepared for me.
Demonic, my itching navel is unravelling.
Every calorie is burning. Inverted &
fetus, tail wagging sperm,
grunt, mount, hunt, scent,
heard.
About the Author:
Mat Wenzel is a PhD student in Poetry. He was a 2015 Lambda Literary Fellow. His work has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Glitterwolf Magazine, Penumbra, Guide to Kulchur Creative Journal, Right Hand Pointing, Off the Rocks Anthology, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Crab Fat Magazine, and Carve Magazine. He earned an M.Ed. from Lesley University and an MFA from Ashland University. He currently has 36 stamps in his National Parks Passport.