Artists:
Tony Mancus is the author of a handful of chapbooks. He lives with his wife Shannon and three yappy cats in Colorado and serves as chapbook editor for Barrelhouse.
CL Bledsoe is the author of seventeen books, most recently the poetry collection King of Loneliness and the novel The Funny Thing About… He lives in northern Virginia with his daughter and blogs at https://medium.com/@howtoeven (with Michael Gushue).
In a Late Stage
We will be the fossil fuels
of the future, so be thankful
for the pressure. A yellow-
flavored sense of imprecision.
An ambivalent taste in the air
whenever certain fabrics
are mentioned. Your heartbreak
will load right after this ad
for a shell-less hard-boiled egg
maker. The shell is what’ll
fold first – so brittle in its holding.
You take your cues from the dryer
lint. Whatever’s left over
after something’s been cleaned
soundly. You pull your yolk
out in chunks to test how done
it should be. The ad runs right
through the blank wall where
your shadow’s been purifying.
It’s breakfast time. You can make
bacon out of eggplant
if you’d like a different kind
of murder. Sit and stare
and chew and listen to the blood
trying to escape the wood paneling
on your chest. It’s important
to keep the machine running until
the buzzer tells us it’s over and we
can rest. It’s important to nod
when your failure to recognize
the difference between feelings
and features comes pre-packaged.
The light in your eyes dim
as a ten-watt bulb. The fog
in your horn spilling out
like only fog can.
