In an editor’s wet dream, this could have been

Korea or China or Japan or anywhere

the limb slaughter & sweet sink of teeth

turn into pearly instrumentals. Transplanted,

of course, into the graying Midwestern oyster,

belts bioluminescent in the corporate coral.

The image is silly, of course. We are nowhere near

the sea & do not possess the ability to properly

drown ourselves the way sweet daughters must.

When their families lose everything that shouldn’t

have been theirs. This is no fable of freedom,

a crying father with his dusty glasses chucked

across the garden of green onion sprouts.

After, I run my fingers through the clocks &

love them more. It is suburban superposition,

shaping these degrees with two hands &

five half-assed poems. Someone palms the grass,

reassuring the crowd that they are enough.

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Image: “Back Patio Skylight” by Alex J. Tunney