Counting Back Down
How you please and the pleaseth go
Bring me a drink my god and a damn
Think teeth thrill the gums till the whole mouth is abscessed
What receding habits of fulcrums and other simple machines do we die next to and carry on and care less when we’re dead about the living than what a government ghost goes to sheets with
Rope ties to try the wretch and the wretch ties to twang
A song billed of groomsmen of the daughter who didn’t swerve when a rug came rolling, when a rig took the body lacking its oversized music the score and viola toward moon tide gone blank and which beetle dungs the future into its casual pile
I press play and three picts a tongue fortunate coin to never believe in a soil never a heaven ungated no polish in the creak for a hinge can be rooked can break with any weight stave the barrel what share
Think away I doubt mist and mostly come back a sonnet of bees their turn a clamped blank box what word other than buzz and spike the dirt a name for what orators beware
Insipid rancor at the dive bar drive in thermal pool clink the ice chamber and what glass greens our lifelined hands shake and settle this thinning sodium light any bulbous crop wilts amongst the stated shire and fuck the fingers for all their den king foresthood their sembling mites and footrot
Talet verde a calf to carve delinquent halves of Saturday desaturant the placemat restaurant clouded between any nesses loch or linen lomen regions capture our selfhood less than what’s subtracted from the body at breathdying to spray a crown crowded with sin the lack in another language tongued and tripe
I’m being haven mama all through the town all the libeling day live long and honor all the ludicrous sounds these letters mend ashtray mouth in the morning bigots ashtray mouth at noon swerve alack and trite misnomers the fear and stuff festooned a pig will know it’s township outskirts a ravenous line of dolor and planks melted cheese shaped like Jesus fallen in the stink
Tony Mancus is the author of a handful of chapbooks and his first full length book of poems is forthcoming from The Magnificent Field. He lives with his wife, son, and two yappy cats in Colorado and serves as chapbook editor for Barrelhouse.
