Paul Ilechko
Graveyard Sensation
Darkness no longer visible
now faded into shadows
lost within the rhythms
of a fatal hunger
(the sugar-crusted syrup of death)
excuse me for my wound
excuse me for my aching
excuse my dusty body
excuse my careless bones
watch the shapes
the positions
that bodies take
as they pledge dismay
(to locked doors and broken windows)
* * * * * * * * *
under a blood red moon
fish float belly up
pale flesh exposed as pink
(beneath the smoking oil of surface)
drifting through the ghostly whiteness of ash
the impenetrable clarity
of an empty mirror
the pale forgotten legend
of salvation
disguised as a force of stagnation
disguised as a graveyard sensation.
Practical Chemistry
Glass breath shattered into a feedback loop of endless
(nostalgic for blueness nostalgic for the spreading cracks of filament)
waxed to a sheen of currency a copper vein of richness
our breathing lingered
we played the chemical game as objects blurred
* * * the fall had changed everything * * *
a trombone voicing wax voicing guttural
(a scarlet kind of knowledge of dubious ethics)
a deflection and then twelve points radiated
beneath a softening breeze
freshness.
The Burning of Oregon
Oregon was a commitment
a desolation beyond flame
increments of growth in witness
a liquid peristalsis
burning down the wild raspberries
plucking the fruit from nature’s armpits
such delicate curves of bramble
beneath the squalling shrieks of plenitude
elementalism as subjectivity
as analogy thrifted to a language
minus vowels as metaphor
for a landscape without lines of sight.
Parsifal’s Spear
Parsifal you laughing boy conceived on
a Friday such radiance such birdsong
Meaning perhaps attached to “peaceful”
meaning not just an absence not just defined by
a lack of hostility but defined by a joyous sense
of belonging of freedom and equality
A wound that will never heal might stride
the stage as metaphor for religion
Meaning can peace even exist in such a society
riddled with the poison of capital accumulation degraded
by the burning corruption of ownership
The dark impurity of the holy blood
the cold relief of self-mutilation
The taste of “class” as a mouthful of dirt spat
with disgust against the walls of the privileged few
Parsifal you indeterminate entity lost
within the garden of your own girlhood
From mercantilism to monopoly
the colonial savagery of expansive dread
So many years of journeying sweet Parsifal
lost beneath the curse of gender you raise
your spear and point it at the sun.
Paul Ilechko is the author of three chapbooks, most recently
Pain Sections (Alien Buddha Press). His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Rogue Agent, San Pedro River Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Book of Matches and The Banyan Review. He lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ.
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