Ebs Sanders
After House (1977)
Dead eyes and mean mouth of the second grade teacher floating over your combo chair desk. Rubbing an eraser to shreds. Sniffing your fingers. Large, sway necked dogs following you home. Backpack flapping. Crawl space. Stuck down on scratchy carpet. Squeezing one eye shut then the other to bring different objects on the floor into focus. Wanting blur, even then. Shrieks of someone grown. Scalding splatter from the stovetop. What happens when the wine runs out.
Mindkiller
I saw a thousand people die in a hundred movies. I saw a man die once. Before his body became amphibian he spoke to me in rasps through a mask. I was the last person to answer him. Walking out the door I blew him a kiss. Went to eat pizza. When I got back his skin had turned to slime. The nurse said, there is a lot of acid in his blood. The nurse said, his body temperature is falling. 86. 73. Etc.
My friend’s boss died and came back to life once. After he was still a real asshole. Breathing down my friend’s neck. Chewing her out. Throwing everyone under the bus. Telling them not to be afraid to die. Because it’s really very peaceful.
What I know is formless, disordered. Heretical want. Openings that keep opening. Who can stop them opening. Slip a torn piece of paper into a crack in the earth. The paper bursts into flames. Blue trembles on the wick.
Ebs Sanders is a poet living in Philadelphia. They co-edit the tiny with Gina Myers. Their work has appeared in Asterion Projects, bedfellows, blush, Bone Bouquet, boneless skinless, Full Stop, Fungiculture, G U E S T, Prolit, The Rumpus, and Tripwire, among others. They are the author of A Fallow Channel (Gauss PDF, 2020) and a bunch of chapbooks and zines.