GAUZE
We drove past slaughterhouses,
industrial plants, found a winding road
we wanted fog
bloody handprints;
we wanted hitchhikers
tattered screams
bronze gates leading into the boil beneath.
We got a lightning storm instead
it was a metaphor:
you the lightning,
tendrils of electricity spewing from your eyes,
me the ground,
dead moths accumulating in my stomach--
A bereft bolt of blue hitting the earth.
I saw them still,
latched onto a memory,
walking wounds with wisps
of white roaming in air,
yellow ghoul eyes
hung from cottonwoods and
nestled in rusty metal.
We drove past slaughterhouses,
industrial plants, found a winding road
we wanted fog
bloody handprints;
we wanted hitchhikers
tattered screams
bronze gates leading into the boil beneath.
We got a lightning storm instead
it was a metaphor:
you the lightning,
tendrils of electricity spewing from your eyes,
me the ground,
dead moths accumulating in my stomach--
A bereft bolt of blue hitting the earth.
I saw them still,
latched onto a memory,
walking wounds with wisps
of white roaming in air,
yellow ghoul eyes
hung from cottonwoods and
nestled in rusty metal.
They cry
I hear them cry
I cry
I cry always
we cry
because I am also
I hear them cry
I cry
I cry always
we cry
because I am also
ghost.
You are electric in the clouds as you
peek through misty curtains,
more than a gasp I can fly through and
warmer than this subzero ache in my gut.
I am never allowed to unwrap from these
tissued secrets, to rip them from my body
as to untangle from my phantoms
please
shock the haunt out of me
In that car I was
ghost
as we go past a drive-in movie theater,
I am still
ghost
hiding in a human suit
with ground to strike
always
ghost.
Your lips are lightning on mine so
I must be more than the
fog-figures we left behind but
they continue to roam around my bones at night.
You are electric in the clouds as you
peek through misty curtains,
more than a gasp I can fly through and
warmer than this subzero ache in my gut.
I am never allowed to unwrap from these
tissued secrets, to rip them from my body
as to untangle from my phantoms
please
shock the haunt out of me
In that car I was
ghost
as we go past a drive-in movie theater,
I am still
ghost
hiding in a human suit
with ground to strike
always
ghost.
Your lips are lightning on mine so
I must be more than the
fog-figures we left behind but
they continue to roam around my bones at night.
Connor Rodenbeck is a second-year student at the University of Denver. He is majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing and minoring in Psychology. His poetry and prose are forthcoming in Call Me [Brackets], Furrow, and ANGLES. He hopes that his work will prompt readers to consider the reciprocal manner that they and the world interact in to inform a larger picture of the human experience.