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ALEX WILLIAMSON MAN-MOTH A monarch heaves between orange and the parchment undersides of its wings in the driveway. Me, lying stomach down and watching. Veiny breaths. Above the red truck interior rots in the heat, and the day climbs over itself towards the opening maw of the sky. Hides out at the horizon. Chews on its own tears. Throws the rotten ones down in rancid slaps at the pavement: long slips from its feathered hands. Everything about the yard is just air except the bloody, leftover centers of each new gossamer hibiscus flower. Want's red body grows through the pink transparency of day. Time works in accumulation, and the entire blossom can be ignored until it falls from the plant and curls up, fetal, into the bladed grass. In the soft-palmed living room of youth: the spilt hologram of the sunset has soaked all the way to the bottom lip of the tablecloth. On the television, a hand curled: fingers distorting into flesh-like smudges around a jar of dust. Off-screen: we are waking up in a nation. Pick up each dead, asleep thing. |