As faithful as it came
Some say when you come to a river, some say begin at the middle, some say nothing and in so doing, sew the roots of the earth to their swollen limbs like the place is meant to keep them still and dancing at the same time. A pull and sway.
That one step between the cartwheel and return to standing no longer needed.
I will bury the last of the trees new shoots and hope things like water continue to fall here and everywhere.
If one were to go, please place his or her name in the cup and burn it like a piece of flipbook paper. The color of the ghost lifeless and pitted in a sky-like fire.
All Halloween orange and chimney red
When focused on the details long enough they lose their sense.
Take out a pad of paper, a pen, a wallet, your name. Take it all out loud.
Press the sores you can’t tongue.
One is the wedding bed, who in it is no longer thin or sleeping.
Two is the curve of a wife’s hip indenting the mattress and the covers where she continues to keep her eyes.
Hoover stand. Pace and track.
Three is the child whose head is nothing more than noise, then the shapes come in.
Call for rides, clamp the curfew.
Four is the house doused in gasoline.
Five is the price of the gasoline itself. Pocket picked clean.
A slickened evening of water growing rainbows.
10:33
it’s ten thirty and
the kids are all asleep
or watching net
work television
dragging their fears
to the future
sore with their mouths
open, what air gets
out, gets them breath
lined up for war
it’s not a speech they’ve thunk
sucking in the limits of the screen
there’s been a mistake
and it keeps repeating
the world is just this little pin
needle in the stack
point sharp with light
and the future gets out
of bed like its tired all the time
it’s tried
the locks
all open handed
whatever beaten pulp
remains left of the record
one button to make the channel
change the other to dig
what’s come unstuck
from the bottom
of the cup
Tony Mancus is the author of a handful of chapbooks, most recently Again(st) Membering (Horse Less Press) and City Country (forthcoming from Seattle Review). He currently works as a technical writer and lives with his wife Shannon and their two yappy cats in Arlington, VA.