The bed frame contains,
a small shadow off the door.
The fan cycles air inside, out.
Does it not seem suspicious?
The way the keys are always
hidden under the can of
sweetcorn?
Should I have not tugged
my drawstring? And plucked
my brows in the dark? Perhaps
not, if the keys are still lost
in my coat pockets,
or hanging from a thumbtack
pushed into a corkboard
map of the world.
Across the cathedral stands
Angel Gabriel.
Gabriel chews on his nails
and his voice booms to me:
Do not concern yourself
with limp cock and sagging
thighs. Or a mind that breaks
each time the wind blows.
Go forth, and accept the
Ways of the Lord he says.
Gabriel makes a silly face
with his thumbs in his ears
and his tongue touching
his nose. Exeunt.
I leave and head
to get my rocks off.
Walking under despotic sky
turned red turned over in
a second.
Andrew Hutto writes out of Louisville, KY. He was recently awarded third place in the 2020 Flo Gault Poetry Prize. In the summer of 2019, he served as a preliminary judge for the Louisville Literary Arts Writer’s Block Prize in Fiction. Presently, he serves on the Pine Row Press editorial board. His work appears or is forthcoming in THRUSH Poetry Journal, Plum Tree Tavern, Amethyst Review, The Weekly Degree°, BARNHOUSE, After the Pause, Math Magazine, Cathexis Northwest Press and Poet Lore. His work has also previously appeared in Eunoia Review.
