Mojave River Review - Winter 2014

Justin Runge / Opus for Popguns and Blood Capsules You build your home close to the edge of dying. When the forest is beaten to lumber, the jars below your sink jingle bell. They wear their skulls and bones like cummerbunds.

You compound all your nouns with light. They glow and cool and heat. You turn down everything—a blanket, a body—evading sleep like it’s telemarketing.

A minivan protrudes from the snow bank like a sock hole’s toe.

Bodybones bob in the opaque creek. Give it a gothic name.

Your telephone booth door folds up like a pamphlet. And see, the moths I promised.

But you want answers. Gray sits like a boy on your shoulders, heavy.

Doctors prescribe heavy doses of paper crane-making. Also, a house of dressthread.

For any baby shoes donated to the monument, you are grateful.

Consider the curfew breakers, those who filled their gymnasium with nickel crickets.

Meanwhile, I am getting better and better at theatre: Where is the shotgun hidden. Where is the shotgun hidden.

Like a whodunit, the stage goes black, the light comes back, I’ve moved. And then, three yelped questions, rapid, none answered, gunshot, end scene.

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