You squat on a rubbled rock surrounded by bombed-out footprints of an ignorant child with balding wings. An infant lay sleeping at your feet. Eyes wide open—her sable tears, singed red, fill her lash-lidded windows pour down her toasted cheeks. Wipe them away with a stroke of your brush. Paint the sky, and sail home – but wait – all the paint in the world has bone-dried. Then that is how deep you must go. Cut through me with a sharpened brush. Dry my skin in the ash-filled wind. Bucket my blood and paint me a sailor’s sunset in a sky where cities used to rise.
Benjamin Davis is the author of a novella-in-verse: The King of FU (Nada Blank Press). His other poems can be found in SOFTBLOW, Maudlin House, Rat’s Ass Review, Star 82 Review, and elsewhere.
