Heath Brougher


The Spirit of Magnesium Monohydrate

May maim
May captain's jaw fall off

neigh
high.    
you're this high
        a knee-high giant among dwarves.
       
Neigh high
your jabberjock jaw 
hangs from your face
        like an errant
bone
     or marrow breaking free from the body
      bursting out of your
flesh 
to strike out on its own accord
and cut its own swath 
    of life in
this world
                         of cages
and vermillion puddles. 

Perfect Mutation

Oxygen filibusters are what’s needed
to keep the life going; that magic mutation
which fills our lungs with oxygen,
hence life is allowed to proceed;
hiccups—the atavistic link to our distantdistant ancestors
should be lauded not laughed at; it was that distantdistant ancestor
of ours, the fishies, who mutationed it for us
along with everything else that crawled out of that Ocean
hiccupping their way onto land sprouting legs as the oxygen
met with what would eventually become lungs; our lungs;
a caribou’s lungs; anything’s lungs; that oxygen drizzling
through the tiny meandering pathways to supply the body, the brain,
with what it needed more than anything in the world.
It is the norm but I prefer to see it as a rouge kind of norm.
It definitely wasn’t the norm when that perfect mutation first occurred.



from Exactly Brightly: Part 71: Smithereengarden

so the milk has yet to behead you and I couldn’t help but notice
the venom
I splashed across your face has had no lacerating affect
I mean
hopefully you’ll get real sick soon but that could be days away
from now
when I want you [all of you] to be in crippling pain—why do I say this? have I suddenly turned evil but I think you know better than that
I was here and I was here and I knocked you right offa here
knocked you right the fuck on out
right outta this garden is too good for your kind
I mumbled
as I became temporarily evil for this small portion of the book and I don’t
know why
just thought I’d come over to pour pneumonia into your hair and spark up a greasefire all illume like luminous flickerings of shivering light dancing Native American similar among the surrounding rocks—I’ll file off all your teeth in your sleep and you’ll wake up Gumm(b)y green with fright and gout—
I’ll tell all the local goats you’re made out of tin and all the local ghosts you’re made out of time so they can drag you across the hinterland vivaciously half dead
I’ma I’ma imma immune to your antelope prize for I live within snakeskin without cake or any delicacy you spoiled people have soiled yourselves with—
I break indigo minds in half on the off-thought
there is no proper way to approach me other than to smile
politely as
you open the box of living dinosaurs I gave you for your birthday
run now
now is the time to run to the forest run run
runrunrunrunrunrunrun right into an urn sip the ashes and dance with Ashley
for she knows her way around an ash
a molecular nothingness whatsoever—
nothing
nothing nothing
and nothing
and nothing
can possibly grow in this tainted aftermath
this unhealthy reigndown of fallout—
what kind of fool would walk with dog legs into the zebra day?



To Milk the Spider and Spook the Cow

an orderly hush falls over the panorama of plethoras
bugs stick in throats as if renting the air-hole for the night
lob the disarmed teller’s bowling ball through the air and into the plush slippers
an orderly is a disorderly quiet thus police must play around smashing heads into Detroit
if you weren’t a lemon then maybe all these limes would keep making so much sense
your muscular tooth and enamel ears have rot written all over them
the illusionist hypochondriaced his rouge tongue between lips
left see-saw and saw a circus uprising
the last trick of the evening will be how to cut sugar with a spoon
and crow with a tablecloth
you are going to throw a golf course on top of my head a full 18 holes that’s where you
crossed the lion to me pigfucker sorcerer
you said you’d ring me until the spit came out of my eyes
bellydanced away like false superimposition
the illusionist goes to trick number two and twists
the goat horns right off the dog’s head revealing the hard-plated sheen of a ram
so very illusional to take something with snail corpse shells
I don’t come down for you I don’t come down for nobody
none would want you as Hop Frog
ravenous eye-glare with flambeau clutched tightly in his hand
just go ahead and
burn it all down.                               I mussed your heathen hair        and now all fine and good
and everything is one giant state of smolder.                  Melted soldiers.
Melted Japanese children of the citizenry.                     You were always the first one to
leave                     to give up                to so readily throw in that towel
I’ll get in a fight in a minute.

Just hold onto the Earth.

You may think you’re stronger than me just because you’re a clown but I am as strong as a cloud ten years from now and will just flat out dust you off of this Earth. Howsabout it?
Wanna shake gumball hands? Ok then. Enamel hands. You still got your muscular Pearlies don’t you? You live in slithering times and no fix. Grab onto the minor song to pull you through Who coatlike into a shaver place. Right to the neck. The next. The Nexercist.
And don’t let go the Earth.



Heath Brougher is the poetry editor for Five 2 One Magazine. He has published two chapbooks, A Curmudgeon Is Born (Yellow Chair Press 2016) and Digging for Fire (Stay Weird and Keep Writing Press 2016) with a third chapbook titled Your Noisy Eyes due out in early 2017. He is a Best of the Net Nominee and his work has been translated into Albanian. He was the judge of Into the Void Magazine's 2016 Poetry Competition and also edited the anthology Luminous Echoes" (Into the Void Press) which will raise money for suicide prevention. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Diverse Voices Quarterly, Chiron Review, MiPOesias, *82 Review, Blue Mountain Review, Cruel Garters, Mobius, BlazeVOX, Gold Dust, and elsewhere.
 
 
previous page     contents     next page