For Lynch and Dalí
She is the ocean, like a sheet of crystal mercury,
and tin mermaids gallop along her waves.
I
am a carousel spinning candied lights. Beneath
calliope steam, horses grin in garlands of steel.
Her kisses fall like rosebuds on my cheeks, my lips,
my ears, just before she cuts open my eyeballs.
Our love is a donkey bleeding through piano wires,
bleeding like a poem, full of light bulbs crowning a
marquis. Behind the stage, Triton’s beard is strewn with
seaweed, his gaze like the beams of a lighthouse.
Tear me open, Spanish dog—and look inside;
beyond a veil of smog you will see an island of garbage
floating like an iceberg. This is what we leave
the world: filth made utter elegance.
Brian Clancy is a creative writing major and peer writing tutor at DePaul University. He likes to write poetry and short fiction. His work will be published for the first time in The Orange Couch. In his free time he likes to write music and go for walks around Chicago.