In a house of dying men
some present as broken nails
cut to the quick too tender for touch
who sit more collapsed than breathing
slumped to elbows in armchairs their electricity
barely recalled behind sandbagged eyes
More water than bone more bone than heart
While others call back from years left in ash
To promise a place where dogs run
tongue out
Where Denali hulks above rivers cutting
themselves smaller each year in letters unopened
And England waits while Boston waits while she waits
To do anything more than study how to grieve
for the chance to be little again
In this house of dying men
she studies the clockwork universe to the sound of
breaking gears, cracked levers, searches for
flights and traces her fingertip down the pink veins
of highways that lead away and always away because
there is only passing left now
More to come who will stroke the arch
of her neck which will bend her to
prayers that one day there will be
Lightning outside therum love without
signals transmitted through
a cosmos in decline and
the chance one day she will open a door
and know a home with no future
to map, retrace, ache for
what might come, is coming, will pass
until these dying men, these ghosts leave
let her step across smoke in the
echoing broken instruments of Heaven and
cast out the spirits of split lips and tearful offerings
covering hushed might-bes leaked from
the dry tongues of dying men
___
Michael Wayne Hampton is the author of three books, and his work has appeared in numerous publications such as The Southeast Review, McSweeney’s, and Atticus Review. He can be reached via his website michaelwaynehampton.com or on Twitter at @motelheartache.