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11am, Sunday, in Green


by Paul McQuade


Nothing left of substance
so a gas receipt becomes a swan.
Dimebag, aorta, pumping green.
Staccato impatience
tapped with a sole,
then fingers filament
in guttering smoke, 
the linoleum grey
nothing. 11am.
Work at 12,
but prayer comes first.
The bathroom a vatican 
of censure and censers;
incense moulders 
sick and sickening, 
and the window, 
the window
speaks Sunday,
all starch and propriety.
The deadbolt slams a fortress;
I am, safe, here.
Left you sleeping off a
knife fight, knife-slender
in a bed of blades.
Work at 12,
but now is forever, limbs 
unassembled,
jumbled haphazardly
in utopian frequency.
I will live
among the drain-void's filth:
hair, shit and slime 
divided into 
organic binding
tethered neither tile nor air. 
The door heartbeats knuckles.
Work at 12,
have to leave in twenty.
Outside is pastel; 
dreamhaze; 
forgettable; 
sudden gusts of pressure, 
then vertigo. You say, you need
to get to work, and hammer, and thunder. 
The door sighs inward.
Nothing unravels, then the quiet 
unspools aurora: light and nameless energy.
The eyelid of the sink blinks silence. 
The clocks choke on smoke.
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