Two Poems

by Zachary Bond

 

Treating Mania

I light a path of candles with my tongue, forking
myself facefuls of manna, drinking

a gallon of hellebore tea. I bathe in a brew
of rose oil & lotuswater. The horizon in my stomach continues

to flip. The clock inside ticks sideways. Coffinblack
crows paint the sky. Abstract

sidestreet, concrete skywalk,
escalator going nowhere, the sky a smock

we all wear en route to a funeral.
Not animal vegetable or mineral

I stripmine empty cities. My eyes
have seeds the father of fire. I tie

myself to the bed when I’m not tired.

 

Myocardial Deficiency

The doctors doctored death
certificates for families

with false causes—pneumonia,
myocardial deficiency—shattered hearts.

The gassing was the easy part
—a white tiled floor, shower

heads outfitted with carbon monoxide,
chainlink on the window
as if even the light was mocking

you, the clock’s open palms dropping
twenty or thirty minutes at most

—like Kafka’s Poseidon, it was all the paper
work that stole their hours.

 

Zachary Bond received the Beatrice Daw Brown Prize for Poetry in 2014. His writing has appeared both online and in print, most recently in Window Cat Press and Reality Hands. t: @zackbond