Heath Brougher



Lonesome Landmine

Easy as taking candy from a baby
simple as pie—an 8 eats an 8—
right now like a fingersnappen
fingersnap
                               broken crumbling gingerbread man crumbs
astrewn.,.,.,.,.,.,..,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,,,.,.,,.,.,.,.,.,,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,..,.,..,.,.,acrost
the floor
razzle and tazzle the hair
and Taliban—
                               bent dust
                               of the crooked dustmite colony
out of all the dustisms
things that make no sense are bad
bad for the vocabulary and the heart
the plumb of the Pantheistic soul, its amazing depths
                has to do with it
an apricot also
                just sitting there
                its fuzz slowly withering
                into wrinkles
to droop
to look swollen and sunken sadfaced
                milkweed enters the store
                you better let the candles go
                               —[out]—
whispy waxyhands
and cookiness
to smoke
to drink of the saptree
                do it first
to do
                                                                            nectarine and nicotine
cork and spit
only in america do malls
                live in people’s hearts
seen from train the gorgeous French countryside
                a virtual unblemished landscape
as is not seen by any train in america
                tearyeyed and tall and taught—the True Verdant
unlike molten apricot with wither of facial feature—
one of sorrow the bald apricot
almost had eyes
and combed its hair
as lightningstruck.



Sprinkling Bitterness Upon the Vale

Ousting                outward                                              Republicolostomy
bags sway                           windbruisen and battered
shrink                shriveled shrimp
                exfoliate reduction
                                              of power
plants leaking
                such sludgy slime sticky sickness
out toward
water                           creek beds
and cradles
                           bleed the water into vermillion
lakes                                                                                   fish killian hues run
amuck in the
muck made by Mankind.



The Silent Continuum of Bloodflow

Zincy copper and I\will                Iwill
                want
the wheels to forego     the jumpbirthday, the jumpstart [mightaswell]

                deplorably depleted                                    roughedup           and lashed
made to cottonpick     allthewhile                          shackled

all the cottonpicking now done                              a little Black Girl licks the cotton candy, smiling—
a smile born out of centuries of pain                     and cruelty         and cage

no trace/not race [look instead at the spirit]
this is not that and that is not                                              this.

where breaks they?

polyester heart makes any solace of the soul a soulless slice of solace

                                              nothing can ever make it “swell” again
not after                this
                                              and

Mr. Tragedy tries to teach us
but we never seem to learn.

                                                                            they are cornpucked [cornpuckered]

                at the heart of the matter[heart is electricity contained within the human

and anyothercreatured bodies] don’t say hi with a bolito, it makes a bad 1st impression

                                              swamp akin, rasclif muscle flexmachine
smashedmirror
rain
on sunnysided days

swirling snowflakes
Earthly dandruff

viiiiiiiicks radium

Universe
dances its Universedance
                [perambulation is not a necessity
                               all that need sway with the Universal silence is the brainwaves].




Heath Brougher is the poetry editor of Five 2 One Magazine. His debut chapbook is titled A Curmudgeon Is Born (Yellow Chair Press, 2016) and he has also published 3 pamphlets. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Chiron Review, Of/with, Lakeview, Crack the Spine, The Seventh Quarry, MiPOesias, Word For/ Word, Sonic Boom, Lotus Eater, The Mind[less] Muse, and elsewhere.
 
 
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