they stiffen beneath crowns of willows, myrtle rags hanging off their blisters,
tourniquets of ruby slinking down their welted legs
two boys I used to watch play and undress
dead cats with barbed-wire combs or ice
skates: renal, fur, clot gliding across
banks of viscera soothe, freshly screamed
puddles glittering over all those tiles
of their cement playpen on White Island
now they are skinny with wind dinners, flint eyes milky under goat-fur scabs,
bound in chigger sheets of splendour carriage puss
one shouts my name my name warning
he can taste phlegm through the AC ducts,
but that’s only my hive-lips snarling
again, chapped from serrated bills, skin
flocks in gutter lakes, the other tickles
in his shit crib, lullabies breed in his neck
they tighten a serene flinch, their frigid veins make sounds like gold maracas,
weed surrounding firs of royal vortices, splice quietness
see, my chest organs are special yet
strange utensils, lab mice kept beneath
stern brackets, subdue discovery as they
devour their maze, allowing notes of filtered
kiss all the fretwork of my throat altar:
cold boys tend to light up within gland privilege
now they are splintered with raw tubes, their sight returns as stomach acid,
voices flatten into chorded looms, wounds irregular
for Frank
