Layla Lenhardt, “Sylvia’s Son

I was wrapped in a bad dream like a towel, wet feet on linoleum. I was too preoccupied to see the cracked blood, to hear the silence until I was kneedeep in your tomb. Sometimes, I dreamt you were a baby being born, waking to a pain that was not yours, a motherhood I never had. It was always the same, the air was metallic when I woke up. You were there, sleeping slack-jawed like a skeleton on my makeshift mattress, for what would be the last time. I didn’t know there was something insidious living in your ribcage, quietly sifting through the cracks, waiting for spring so it could spring. I still wake up screaming, “please crawl into my mouth, you can make a home in there!” I saved your beard shavings in a porcelain egg, I no longer call my mother. The tin can on the other end of the string is silent and rusted. I put crystals everywhere to try to see your fleeting reflection, to know that I’m capable of remembering more than the warmth of your blood on my hands.

The Opiate, Summer Vol. 18 I Feel Threatened

by egg yolks and the administers of anything intravenous I feel threatened by the assortment of militant weeds in June by microscopic organisms deep inside secretive yogurt by the blinkless indifference of fish in their natural habitat I feel threatened by the creamy river curdling past an old sawmill I feel threatened by traffic lights gone dark in a darkness scented with lightning by ice flattened into crouching murderers of automobiles by commuter trains with muscular ankles able to jump I feel threatened by contemporary music underpinned by tubfuls of bass notes by debuts of online networks subsuming the quiet voltage of night by magazines trilling their sympathy for metrosexuals I feel threatened by children divided by chickenpox and by academic transcripts from a school burned down in 1968 I feel threatened by Canadian coins in undiscriminating pockets and by the signatures of those who offer dubious rates of exchange I feel threatened by sarcasm in the Atlas Mountains by trailer parks on continents with amorphous borders by counterintelligence implying an ensemble of rival intelligence I feel threatened by co-workers cut off at the eyebrows in company photographs I feel threatened by the Heisenberg uncertainty of lovers neither here nor there by girls in pink I can’t tell apart by older by younger women by never and forever by him by her by them by you