poem by michael lottner
illustration by maia boakye
The Afterlife of the Party
People lean back into centuries,
the gesture as natural and silent and steady
as the rains that spawned the world.
What a declension it was
to learn an animal is not a god.
To do a swaying dance with a pet’s corpse.
To teach a new pet its old name.
If the reader is suspicious that they are alone.
Yes. I want this fact to be known.
It is what makes us real enough
to deny ourselves. To be someone
who thinks they hear the phone ring.
Who picks up the phone and speaks and paces.
Who trips over the invisible wire.
Who is next to their body, unwilling to help.
Who drops a plastic bag where no one
would think to drop a plastic bag,
just to prove the existence of—
hold that thought. I have not said anything.
Or everything I have said is invisible.
So glad I have turned hair into a kind
of sweetness, snow into sour powder.
So glad I am not dead. And being
someone’s child? It spreads me like jam.
back to bad faith
next
previous
© Plasma Dolphin. All rights reserved. We work hard on this stuff. Be cool about it.
Website designed by Sonja Katanic.