Sean Kilpatrick
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2 poems -
The Man Who Followed Me Home from Work
hit me so hard I could smell my brain.
My wife began to love him.
He rejected her because her back was pale.
I gave him every sleeve in my dresser.
He let us apply salve. We didn't deserve salve.
We cried for him in a
lapse of nights I don't remember
because he wasn't there
to beat me.
I missed the man who followed me home from work
so loudly that when I sobbed the city dove up
around my waist like a skirt and begged for kisses.
Everybody begs I said. Everybody is discount.
The man who followed me home from work
sang me racial slurs until my heart got swollen.
I pawed storefronts and was arrested.
He finally held me like I needed to be held.
In handcuffs.
My Address is
that Flower
I molested your birth certificate.
I drove a unicycle into your mother.
I tripped you with my foreskin.
I got naked and chased your pet with a guitar.
I smeared diarrhea on your clothesline.
I threatened your bad skin with a calculator.
I brushed the sleeve of my sweater on your cornea.
I stuttered your gramma's maiden name during intercourse.
My address is that flower.
I don't know how to play
guitar or have intercourse.
I don't know how to bark at something until it dies.
I don't know why you whipped another boy with your spine.
I don't know how to kill you long enough to say thanks.
I don't know why I sell myself in this package.
I don't know short boys being coughed on.
I don't know why my favorite cliche is wiping other people's sperm off
your lips.
I don't know how to convince my bed it is not a child.
My address is that flower.
