Lucifer discovers the cradle of civilization has been discontinued |
Issue 13
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fists of ash enter your mouth to choke dial tones out of your tonsils
& set them in a cathedral. king of the mountain is no fun when you’re on the run. they will kill you the second you turn your back to the sea, son. you may as well lay among ambulances flung on asphalt. they’re your congregation warring in the wheat fields & lit like crusades. the fog tap dances in with a bruised crucible all tragedy in coat-tails & top hat. you shuffle through shoes hung from telephone wires & they catch you by the neck. when you had it all to lose, pride was your crown jewel. you’re a rug burn, baby—total throttle in a bottle. you tore urbane from a turbo engine, folded it into a missile of homily. you drop your guard like a lucky rabbit’s foot. skies could fall on your head like a swarm of terrified wasps. the man in the moon could paint your face white with midnight bombing campaigns. pick up the pieces of shattered piggy banks. capture Knights Templar cloistered with clavicles littering train station platforms. pound them into rosaries. where’s the beautiful war your lord promised? run into the Dead Sea & sinking under the weight of a burnt-out tank. you have pulled the prayer rugs from under family after family, but never conceived your flying carpet could desert you when you’re hovering in the starving air over a landmine frozen in explosion. your one option left: bury your face in the mountain & beg it to love you to death. |
Panika M. C. Dillon’s work has appeared in Heavy Feather Review, Copper Nickel, The Diagram, Steam Ticket, apt and others. She placed second for the 2024 Vivian Shipley Poetry Prize. She received her MFA in creative-writing poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and works as a legislative reporter at the Texas Capitol.
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