"The Cliffs of Moher" by Brian Builta

My stick figure is nothing

but a gussied up sodbuster.

And me, deranged in the disturbed pools

of your eyes. Fuck this

Still a shitty little suicide note.

Jolts of palaver. The flutter

of our career so far away

on a Tuesday afternoon,

some sort of weather in the sky.

This ironic precipice whips our sins

back into our faces. The narrative arc

of a subtle slaughter. The time

Judas forked food off your plate.

The time I put on the peppermint tea.

The moment the quiet dark path opened.

Is there anything heroic about living

windblown and weatherbeaten?

Glopping under your eyes, pieces

of broken things, angry bees, a hopscotch

of gin and blood. There’s a Samaritan for you,

talking your broken body back to shore

at the bottom of the fall.

Brian Builta lives in Arlington, Texas, and works at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. His work has been published in North of Oxford, Hole in the Head Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, TriQuarterly and 2River View among others.