Springterror by Matthew Milia

Look at all the steam off the snow
We listen to the Top 40 country radio blow
Listen to the singer, trying to put my finger on who killed who
When it does linger, the sweet nostril-stinger of the spring’s mildew
Was it your will to take his pill orally?
Or did you act perfunctorily?
The lamp-shadow dampness
The safe world of campus
The water of your high school eyes
Some stadium
Some old college tries
There in my stomach the liquor heated
With every place I ever trick-or-treated and
We used to message through the ink of night
With skin still young and pink and tight
Back when the tongue thrust with all of our young lust
The dimple-chin brunettes who make simpleton pets of me
And yes I’m a heel, but with Peter’s keel
I will cut through the lily-pads
The moping mothers and hillbilly dads
And the billboard dentist from White Lake to East Lansing
With his Day-Glo halo sentence entrancing
The moon makes lake-water out to be a filmy skin
But who can begin to tell what skin holds far within
Oh the bathers
Oh the toweling
Your cells are saviors that ring wet bells growling and
You have the black eyes
Just holes filled with night skies
A saddening sweetness through your kid-sister-sighs
Where the Sylvan Lake Corner is flickering with childhood
And the mourner within me feels older than wildwood
And if I knew what part of me was wax
I’d try to truncate it with a black sopping night axe