There is no rest.
I go crazy to see you
in the raw when you open
the night coop and whistle
at the chickens.
You are a cowbell,
they run at you voracious, four stomached
your hands of feed to scatter.
Don’t spread yourself
anywhere else
but here, near me,
where the shale skies tickle
your humming humor like whale bones, fingered
at their stops—
in perpetual motion with the stripping sea
and the marigolds mute for lovely laying there.
Take each blanched, chiseled rib for tender pay,
build your home between
your legs in ambergris,
smell the perfume of the humpback,
resolve to eat
it in the morning when
you harvest what’s left for your kitchen,
when you remember
dark the men who bit you they are.
You wake the dead
when you decide to consume them,
resemble them,
or carry on their name with dignity
in the only manner you’ll allow—
—your children’s social security cards.
It is as easy as lying.
--
Manny Grimaldi is a writer, actor, and editor from Louisville, Kentucky. He is managing editor at Yearling Poetry Journal, in Lexington, Kentucky. His publications and future pubs include The Rye Whiskey Review, Moss Puppy, Pegasus, The Crossroads Literary Magazine, Drinkers Only, LexPoMo anthologies, and Club Plum.