https://www.theshorepoetry.org/mike-wilson-faces-on-milk-cartons

I waft into the backyard at 5 o’clock

where a blind psychic senses me before

I sense myself

                           Her face pickles, her ire

stinks like an electrical fire

                                                   She searches

for me inside invisibility, throws dirt

against the air, hoping to hear it strike

my ghost, a blind man’s bluff, I say

                       here I am

and now that I’m found by sound

she flings stings of anger, gravel sprays

from her motorbike scratching off, I say

             you can hit me all you want

and she stops

                         I wrap my arms around her

hold her in prayer to steady the shake

of sobbing until she’s still and we merge

in a glowing sphere of affection

                                                          The crowd

picks me up from the ground, but already

she’s giving a goodbye speech I can’t hear

but understand because I listen

                                                            She runs

out of words. Silence becomes a hole no one

knows how to fill

                                 She grabs her motorbike

                                 gives the starter a kick

The bike speeds riderless, swine stampeding

straight to the rich lady’s house

                                                           and crashes

through the sidelight into rooms of fragile

treasure

                 I run inside, the bike’s on its side,

exhausted, a panting tongue that becomes

a guitar strung with bones of a saint I strum

         as I sing to you this hallowed song

http://www.harpyhybridreview.org/issues/issue-8-5-summer-2022/#

A Minute Before Midnight

In the bed of a river that runs no more

there’s a flash and I wake sitting

in sand

              Pat Robertson’s shadow on my left

leaves

            returns with a rune engraved with

lines he claims are fingerprints of God

(I suspect Pat drilled them in his workshop)

The heat of Jerry Falwell’s hand touches

my right shoulder

                                 he hands me a translucent

switchblade

                      calls it angel wings

                                                         says he

found it on the bottom of a bone-dry sea

but

       there isn’t time to judge

                                                   we have to

take the children up the mountain

I’m surprised old Pat and Jerry

seem so young

                            they keep their faces

to the ground so I can’t see they’re

meat puppets of a benevolent

deity

          I walk with Pat who isn’t Pat

          and when it begins to snow I don’t

have a coat but

                            there isn’t time to

           go back

Halfway up the mountain we stop

at a sandwich shop

                                   mother feeds the

children while I search the darkening sky

and see

              there isn’t time to

                                               light a candle

either we see in pitch-black night

or wait for fate at the void’s gate