I Know it Shines on Something
Every morning, Lake Christopher ignited into an uncanny glow, as if a magician huddled in a watchtower nearby, diligently practicing his finale. I could tell you that the flames crackled across my palms like dollar-store stigmata, but what I own isn’t any of my business these days, any more than where you find buried sources of light is any of yours. I could drop a sweaty torch to the floor when your plot lines are leaking fuel, but I’m only allowed three lies tonight. I could watch the inmates sprint toward the iron shapes asleep inside the hunger machine. I could swear that the movement alone – the heart that breathes into their craving legs – will be enough to crack them free, enough to pry a magic shiver from the wreckage of their days – but who among the angels will swear that you led your life the way you did, will burn the fingerprints off of all the sparks you were aching to collar or forgive?
The Sun Never Sweats on the Restless Class
You tap out a stale new drama as the radiator dents the greedy voice of an east Ohio midnight. In act one, the titans abandon Earth – left foot, right foot - you know the drill. They’ve haven’t lived here long but the rent is high and their limbs are colossal.
I hate to bother you when the surveillance screens are bopping with such tender tempos, but a sign on the highway warns that there’s a missing adult in a grey Hyundai. Another sign cautions that one greasy atom in your head can unburden the whole chain, a titan crushing civilization between his knees.
The desk clerk reminds a patron that for everything you say, the opposite is also true. They nod their bald backs toward my jacket.
The next day, the smell of butter and beets infects our apologies. It’s me who wants to hear all the crisp notes in your silence. By noon our jeans drip with sun drops. We take turns remembering dinner tables and cigarette machines. We are just like optimists, chiseling through a box of cotton balls.
Do our dreams protect us or peel us back? What will become of the humans, of the rewards they promised themselves?
It’s not the hotels, it’s the hard yellow air between exits that can’t be trusted, bubbling inward, a kind of time travel that you can’t get from science or fiction, a thin paste left on a mind that comes from nowhere and goes home to nowhere.
One of us will always be missing inside the grey, the grey that seeps out no matter how tightly you pull the hatches. One of us is sure to be found, scrambling into the middle of the universe, fingers swallowing the red dice one more time.
Jason Abbate lives and writes in New York City. His work has been featured in publications such as The American Journal of Poetry, Red Rock Review, South Florida Poetry Journal and Trampoline. He is the author of Welcome to Xooxville