from Reconstructions

 
Hills flatline in the rearview.
 
Your hand resting into mine. Headlights.
 
An exile of clouds.
 
 
Picture this:
                            downriver a man guns
his truck. Everything smells like wings.
 
Now picture him one morning wearing
skirts of stunted light.    No. Even less.
 
Crows shattered like crumbs
                    across our one good road.
 
 
Speech fucks the air with a proof of us.
 
Or. The gap between my front teeth
   is the exact width of a zipper.    Trust me.
 
 
Sheets. Rubbed red thighs. Roll. Rain
   obsesses itself. Down the wood. Pinned up
against the window. Yes. Crests.
                                    Yes. Shudders shut.
 
 
Lightsource whisper. Shackle me back
                    to the dashboard.
 
& do you have the negatives.
                                                 & why.
 
 
I did shave my legs. Brine-diesel. Tobacco
half-chewn & left to stench in a sawed can of coke.
 
They speeched & was an already.
                    Smear some sun in the cut.
Grin.
 
 
In the town where we buried my grandmothers,
the collective noun for faggots is also a murder.
 
 
Heavens horizon, then bruise, then rust.


Brad Trumpfheller is a writer & bookseller living in Boston. Originally from the South, their work has appeared in The Nation, The Adroit Journal, West Branch, Muzzle, Indiana Review, among others. They tweet @bradtrumpfh