Issue 8: Michael Scharf
Bouleversement
A golf club
shoved
upside down
down the length
of the esophagus —
the club head just showing
though teeth
Apartment-dwellers
in contractor’s bags
piled at curb for 12:30am
pickup
Other bags, filled just with blood,
opaque, shiny
bulging, misshapen,
drained for sodium
and pumped into
the streetlights
All the city’s dogs
electrocuted and left stiff,
piled, burned
hair.
Elevators run on long cords
in whatever direction they are needed.
Whimsical Packet
Medical element, preserved
tentacles,
strung walls, busted
umbrellas, rice,
lobster claws
strained violin tops,
scrolls, shower
stars, lone peach with
blossom, S.A.
eggplant colored bath
sticky star, hanging
ice-cube like, isolated
flecks, evidence of scrapes,
more fruits and bursts
faded and distressed.
Cerberus
When death was a master and not a miasma, not a failure
of health care—when the graveyard sat within the town, city, square block—
when, sickened, you turned your eyes up—
Fuck the ward and its beeps
night as it creeps
Circumspection
Circumspection
pushes outward
to assimilate
Fatted,
and then pushed
into higher state
hood
hoos
hodding handling
Es gibt
Il faut
To a fault
he crept
taken token
too closely
wrapped
in 3
1, 2
Michael Scharf is the author of Telemachiad and For Kid Rock / Total Freedom. He lives in New York and Shillong.
