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Issue 3 Poetry

  “Cowboys on LSD—intercepted missive—Not Suitable For Public Viewing—c0lor1z3d—EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY—Digital-Reprint—Surgeon General’s Warning: May Cause Liver Damage—With love, Mom.”

Since surrealism is a style I don’t dabble in too often, getting a read on what parts were confusing in the right ways, vs. confusing in the wrong ways, was very beneficial.

Protracted gallops breed

                 Uncertainty.

                         Awaiting Final Showdown:

              Sundown

6 minutes till.

 

Skeleton mares’ nostrils flare    westward

                 Closeup hooves

Trample jagged aftergrowth:

Sawgrass
Staghorn
Pink-blooming
Cacti     Side-eye
Rattlers incise along
Cracked desert bed             Bone marrow talisman

                                                                         Of the 16:9 Valley.

     ‘Pump you so full of lead you’ll be sneezing staples!       You hear me, godddamnit?’

Wide anamorphic lens edges blur and quiver       as comes into focus:

               River

lousy with tossed-about post-shootout

               Bodies

Blood redolent as sky shines down
Ceaseless horizon-line torrents
Of wavy air affection     It’s

Not Happy, so neither
Are We.

Gallop // draw // rewind // pause—
The VCR rustles
In the remodeled rec room.
An: O-what-have-I-done? afternoon.

Midwestern sunlight

                             Streaming in,

Emptying us like

                             The Valiant Gunslinger’s

                                                           hemorrhaging magazine.

           Hush now Friends, for the Man with No Name
is about to impart      in his too-cool timbre
        syllables of tough love
to this pre-dawn damsel,      he says:

‘I knew someone like you once.

             Was no one there to help.

                                   Now get movin.’

Cowboy-speak for love.

                                   The Drug of Suns
                                    Torches your liver
                                   —While the hero rides in his saddle—
                                   Branding your tongue with its parable galaxy
                                   As a rancher insignias his cattle.

And now comes the part when the bad-dental villains  

                Cast aside their dust-dented Stetsons, 

 Grimace/bracing for gunplay 

                             To transplant their midsections

              With 76 cc’s of Quicksilver—who’s the quicker

Shot? 

                             Shot                Shot                  Shot 

SHOT SHOT SHOT SHOT SHOT SHOT                                 shot.

Brooks Harris is a graduating senior at DePaul University, majoring with a degree in Creative Writing. His primary focus is poetry, and has had his work appear in places like previous editions of The Orange Couch, Crook & Folly‘s last issue, and on the Fourteen East website; he also has self-published his first collection of poetry, titled “Multiple Stories Happening At Once.” You can show him most any book and odds are he can tell you the font it is in.