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.

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