it’s high noon on the desert coast as I sit upside down
and the vein through my chest bulged like last night’s full
moon
and the hospitals don’t have empty rooms
and vacancy rates are soaring on the streets
and the tenants are lining up out the door
and property managers will spy on then extort the residents
and night turns to day perpetually—far too often
and I lit one smoke off the next like the plane was going
down
and a thousand crickets sang me to bed a hundred times alone
and the world turned faster than you’d think
and a tramp screamed in the alley louder than a rooster at
dawn
and sons called their mothers bitch for slapping them
and mothers slapped their sons for calling them bitch
and burnt tree bark fed the poor
and I’m hungry too
and every poem is a person so get used to it
and they sent your friends to war
and they nuked the grass
and the past
and the sun will soon melt flesh
and the lambs have surely all been slaughtered
and they never let you come back with vision or a voice
and our voices have long since been slipped of mind
and our eyes are shut
and we are the prey
and we are the hunters
and a cornered lion will fight back when the pressure’s on
and whispers will send shivers down the spine
and six-piece bands will call flowers from the ground
and we’ll dance
...
Matthew A. Toll currently hides out and cooks for a living in Burlington, Vermont after spending some time on the west coast in Los Angeles. He’s had poems published online in Dead Flowers: A Poetry Rag (issues 8 & 10), Fat City Review, Hidden Animals Lit Journal, Walking Is Still Honest, The Vehicle, Industry Night, and GravelMag.
Matthew A. Toll currently hides out and cooks for a living in Burlington, Vermont after spending some time on the west coast in Los Angeles. He’s had poems published online in Dead Flowers: A Poetry Rag (issues 8 & 10), Fat City Review, Hidden Animals Lit Journal, Walking Is Still Honest, The Vehicle, Industry Night, and GravelMag.
