The Fag Ends of the Hustle

Blurred like the rabbit from the hawthorn

sprinting under the goshawk’s gaze,

he wants me in the frame, despite the trust

in spite we share, a mutual communion

that looks better at dusk,

where I watch the island violet sky glow.

I’m mail that hasn’t come.

I’m iron-colored ice stuffed in dark rum;

another liquor friend asks for some,

impatient to taste me —

my devotion to melting behind doors.

Someone is wrong, but I close an eye to play along,

something young and lucky kneeling to make mud pies.

But his undertow inside is miles long,

with sirens humming bouquets

of ebbs and flows, tempting beasts out to feed

with ads pledging rarefied oral

expressions of carnal verse.

I want to follow form without function, but won’t permit

the drowning of it’s probably nothing.

Acceleration is owed velocity, and our cruising altitude

needs no air, no wings, just a sling

wherein my legs and arms

are sold out, like schools of fish finding other words

for my bare feet (egg whites) and his black hats (riptides),

as if the practice of such poetry might be a form of rescue

instead of custody.

I’m his fag end, the last parts of tight-lipped sticks

and ill-fitted stones

to bomb his words: bible verses belched

like my wind-torn ankles

and utopian wrists, all tied and untied again and again

to allow for time to name the men who came

with bucking and growling epithets,

like first, last, and favorite,

night, day, and degenerate,

right, wrong, and sanctioned. 

Mikal Wix lives in the American South, which seeds insight into many outlooks, including revenant visions from the closet. Their work can be found or is forthcoming in Corvus Review, Jupiter Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Roi Fainéant Press, decomp journal, and elsewhere, and works as a science editor by day. Find them on Twitter @MikalWix.