Joseph Goosey
from MAINLINING THE BRINK
The holiest terror in toil town
waltzes into the meat den,
observes you tripping the life atrocious,
& decides it’s go time.
It’s a grand gesture,
a glitter gift,
to go out this way
into that undead Elvis,
perpetually swollen night.
Donate my books to the collective,
send all my organs to the obligates.
Their faces
covered in my face.
What hallucinogens!
Their faces
covered in my fossil fuel.
Their swords
dangled with my sinew.
It didn’t have to be like this.
We have been an inferno.
How to blow up a pipeline?
How about a human?
Your new burial insurance is available!
Critically less than your threshold,
please make a karma deposit.
We share during the drudge times.
Shove me in the drunk tank,
akin to salinity.
How I adore a safety cage,
especially the lonesome
with locks that don’t lock,
walls that don’t wall,
and tears that don’t tear.
I'll become a nuclear catfish with the best of them.
Just dress me in your best dress.
Dissolve me in the womb.
They're coming for us.
It's true.
There's no universe in which it isn't.
But who will look after the hive?
We've raided all the tequila
& paid too much to be tepid.
We're bored beyond binaries.
Meet me at the sullen business meeting.
Everything’s virtual now,
including our piety.
Feel wild to go nude.
My entire adult life
I’ve felt their rank breath,
even the wolves’.
from MAINLINING THE BRINK
God must loathe get togethers.
God must really have it out
for that little emu.
The problem of evil:
the only classroom that slaps.
Nobody wants medicine
unless it’s bloody as can be.
Pray a horse gets put down today.
Break a leg! Break two legs
(if you wanna be my lover)!
States’ rights, for all I care,
can eat a sack of ACME rockets.
After pumping out a bunch o’ breathers
my favorite kin took her shotgun
to the solitude holler,
never to be seen again
the way of the dodo.
This artisan cross we bear
is banned as cigarettes
inside a tragic Applebee’s.
Inside the journal of place
they speak of economic
& environmental justice
but I just don’t know:
Where were you last Thursday night?
Busy with the most renowned hit and run?
The allegory strains.
Once, in a fable,
I tried investing with the socially conscious
but lost my dinner funds in a week.
The rule of thumb is severed.
Never to be recovered.
We evolved into this?
Adolescent composition notebooks
soiled with gadgets
we’ll never outgrow?
Private ownership got me ghastly today.
∞
Inside the urn, a photo:
Self. 7 Years Old. Gaping smile.
Four missing front teeth.
Ohio Buckeyes pullover sweater.
Standing in a cage with bobcats.
∞
Ever read Frisk?
Our reality exceeds its faux brutality.
Private ownership slit me open that day.
∞
Boy, 7, killed by bobcats at Daytona roadside zoo.
Parents say: WE THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE!
& that’s the crisis
coming after the baby carriage.
∞
What language remains
for the nonexistent?
Not for the dead,
not for the missing,
but for the staggering totality
of everyone’s absence.
Stations of the Cross Bonus Footage
In the Netflix original Hellbound
everyone becomes afraid
that the most minor of sins
against a god in whom some of them don't even believe
might summon a trio of executioners
who kinda look like The Thing
to pummel them viciously
then thrash their essence
into the bargain bin
of perpetual grief.
Their fear of this fate is constant.
The obnoxious cult leader
has a monologue about what it's like
to coexist with such paralyzing trepidation
for such a longass time
before eventually being turned
into a pile of goopy
inorganic matter.
The show is a gory banger
in which every character
must have also attended
Saint Peter in Chains Elementary
in Hamilton, Ohio.
Since ’93, their lifestyle
is the same I’ve been trying to shake.
Am I Way Too High Right Now or Is This River Filled With the Fallen
There are a variety of lifetimes in which we would have been okay.
This is not one of them.
We will never be one of those.
This is both preface & postface.
I invite you to exit stage left with that Buffalo Trace in your trembling hand.
Yes, the hangovers & dinosaurs await.
Yes, you were right to cut ties.
Your kayak to the bottom is waiting.
No, it’s not a canoe.
Yes, I realize you were under the impression there would be a canoe.
& pie. You humans are always under the impression there will be pie.
But a canoe requires two, fucker.
Yes, some have attempted to leap that gulch.
No, they all burnt for eternity.
Yes, the Catholic church was lying but burning for eternity is still an option.
I aim to excise the bitterness from this shrieking.
But this will not be that.
There are no friends in this realm.
Retreat starkly.
It will all be cookies.
Joseph Goosey lives in North Carolina. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Peach Mag, Annulet Poetics Journal, Travesties, The Glacier, and BANSHEE. He is the author of a chapbook, STUPID ACHE (Greybook Press), and one full length collection, Parade of Malfeasance (EMP Books).