Photography by Ashley Syers

          i.

boy arrives home afterwards,

fireworks scarring skies &

scraping numb gums with

dirty fingernails.
 

suddenly, red sand hand print

over his heart like never before

&, too, another alcohol gag

pressing lips into lip into i.

          ii.

i licked metropole

off the window on the drive home.

            tasted like cognac.

i mean to ask

            how many resolutions am i

            allowed?

temporal equity or just

            another distorted refraction of

all “this” we drive through (to get home)?

& sure, tastes like cognac, but,

maybe i only know that cause i’m

                       part of this “this”.

          iii.

Country feels boy, here.

send him windowsill cockatoo for new year.

all calculated, formulated, premeditated:

reminders of itself & the distance

between the body & its armoury

of sandy dead cells.

Country feels boy.

here, taste me in caked pollen on car window.

but fireworks in gum and cognac in brain

leave palate spilling over in “this”.

all he knows of you is

capital C at the start of your name.