by Marc Vincenz
My bones are numbered each part of my endoskeleton collapsing in succession
Can’t remember if ever I was a child who healed like others scrapes turning
to scabs yearning to be picked and scratched but worming under the skin like
silverfish Foreign among you I stir in the muddy gravy of the city growing old
in drafts rubber-soled and checkered in flannel slippers so my feet don’t touch
the bitters and in the dim morning light three roaches in the kitchen Tiberius
Nero and Marcus Antonius battling over my crumbed dominion of linoleum
in corners never reached they slip into the walls when I’m frying my egg and the
coffee in the filter dribbles the marble sheen of cream and the distant choir of the
city angelic in it’s own hallelujah until seventeen down a man with no name
six across a looped rope and the answer on page twenty-nine past the bombs
the price of fertilizer past the supermarket specials and the saros of a recurring
eclipse when the umbra doesn’t reach the earth past the rattling of the janitor
on the stairs and behind the walls a million roaches waiting for the fall
of the empire and my stigmata of five holy wars never quite healing over
