I squeeze shards between my palms of his broken moon
for the werewolves to remember.
When death returns from the restroom,
he pulls out a credit card ridden with maggots—
asks the server if they accept
American Express or Discover.
Try killing a flesh-eating man-shadow
& the patriarchy will hurl him back to life
in your poems. He will thank Jesus
for the Last Supper. He will linger
long after decomposition.
I confidently carve holes in his chest
without his attention for detail:
Holes in the shape of cruise ships to the Bahamas.
Holes like family
reunions in Nevada.
In every cavity of his body
I place reminders of who I am—
he won’t read them.
As we promenade home from the movies,
after catching a flawed remake of a classic,
the moon sheds its clinical
surveillance over our skins.
There will be sequels, he gripes
the last time I understand him.
On his dead lap, I plant sesame
seeds before resting my head. A fly
buzzes inside our bedroom.
The dead, too, can wish to die anew.
//
CASUALTIES OF ART
A plane crashes into a bike. The front part of the bike lands in a river; the back, in
a desert of glass. No one survives.
The clouds swarmed the sky like emerald cobras. The gray choked
on our prayers for rain.
I would relinquish my thousand masks
to seal the pits in my mother’s smile.
Near the site of the crash, a vulture perches on a desiccated branch.
By sundown,
both collapse into ash.
Roy G. Guzmán is a Honduran-born, American poet whose work will appear or has appeared in Notre Dame Review, Drunken Boat, The Acentos Review, Cartridge Lit, and NonBinary Review. He is the poetry editor at Sundog Lit. Trace his remains on Twitter: @dreamingauze.