it smells like your dog all over me body shrinks out the air like wow i can get it now:
how an interval congeals on us wonder if i webmd’d that feeling
like a rag of colts on their honeymoons one day we’ll call this the lanternfly summer
we all reactivated our facebooks and got out of bed, and that was fun and not sad or scary or chaotic
a woman posted a close-up, motion-blurry selfie with the caption i kill every day
and we felt safer a tidal wave of moonlight levels
cleaning us selfish off of everything, pushing freighters off the edge like marbles
a system of tangled metal arms actualized into the shape of our double body:
a song covered so many times its authorship turns. me on one toe, invisible hoop turning. whole body
turned rubber spatula, forming to contours: in what ways do we talk each other into social capital? or carve tunnels through whole trees for cars? we’ve only been in bed for one year today we’ve only just pried open found mutuality,
drank the driest rosato under $25, turned to steel balls on the fins of each other, felt the horizon tilt caffeine dizzy nicotine dizzy i’m missing you in lausanne very funny very nervous
text a photo of the swiss alps the big bald trees on the banks of lake geneva a giant foosball game but all of the athletes have rabbit heads you would pretend to hate it here
this is where all the evian in the world came from
a real co—star notification inflates itself into existence and forgotten memory at once there’s a place in the world where the rain is so acidic your sense of smell goes flat over time a flower could be any flower at all i told you about the smell of ozone before rain it all comes back
handled air
in zack’s poem, he says days without healing and it personally feels sickening like a wave ringing a supple milk glass bell a weepy voicemail through the drywall a finger on the psycho killer button
some people see space and feel cold or they see themselves inside of that grand drape feet sticking out the bottom: maybe everything is pretension:
a water balloon end for a belly button a body as a whole stucco house: a lifelong double-dare: craft an obsession: my dear husbands tangled in strips of paper like cash stuck to calf meat
an instant: the paper turns highlighter orange nylon and the tension snaps hornier than it might’ve before the sparse foley music are you ever the passenger in a big truck? fully turned to esplanade under a hottie? felt the sun on your skin and felt dog-eared when it’s gone? go to the grocery store see the bounty of it and feel scared and want to take everything home and keep it safe? *ominous voice* erotic wig… romantic wig… a ghost of le labo hanging around my neck slims to fit a single palm the bed folds us up like two lozenges lozenge is really the name for the shape / i am
truly obsessed with how i can see for miles after acupuncture healthy posture feels natural and rewarding for weeks my first job was at a haunted house where state road 436 turned to altamonte drive some invisible butcher curtain in the intersection some ultra-fine establisher some staticky Dead Hand signal re: caste… anyway a woman brought her own snake from home and i dressed in all black pushing my creepy hands through a four-way stretch. my job title was nightmare / i am
passed into your hands like a football, like a champagne neck on a saber mercury rolling in lines in a palm
i could shed my human skin and you would pick it up like it wasn’t disgusting like it was wrapped in paper and ask me where i want you to put it
Zach Blackwood is a poet and performance curator in Philadelphia, PA. He is the author of SEXY UNIQUE HOLLOW POINT from glo worm press. He has poems published in Peach Mag, Occulum, Bedfellows Magazine, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. He is available on the world wide web @blackwhom.
This week’s illustrations are by Michael DeForge, who lives in Toronto, Ontario. His comics and illustrations have been featured in Jacobin, The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Believer, The Walrus and Maisonneuve Magazine. He worked as a designer on Adventure Time for six seasons. His published books include Very Casual, A Body Beneath, Ant Colony, First Year Healthy, Dressing, Big Kids, Sticks Angelica, Folk Heroand A Western World. Also, he stirs hot toddies with a pair of scissors.
