Sweet teenage goths, come back
from evening’s municipal cemeteries
and haunt the living for a minute.
The non-Newtonian fluid of your soul
has never been firmer. All that stress.
All those therapy dogs you need to pet
to approach wellness again.
Loiter not the convenience store
parking lots of irony; comfort cools
on your mother’s table. No matter what
the poets say, hunger never names itself.
There is no other word for hunger.
Continued existence is part vertiginous height,
part arms stretched wide for balance,
part dream about a farmer’s market peach.
They only have them for a week,
trucked up from Georgia, so briefly
in an unbruised state when stacked
in their eponymous baskets. Envy
that white flesh. See how the shriveled pit
barely stains its inner sanctum pink.
Keep all the darkness that you want–
you will never not be of this world,
which ships a bouquet of red roses
to your doorstep each morning.
Wear black. Be counterculture’s child bride.
Carry secrets like a pack of crackers
slipped up your ornate sleeve.
It’s nothing compared to the fruit,
which hides a wasp inside, if you’re lucky.
Matt Poindexter’s (www.mattpoin.com) poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Best New Poets series, The Missouri Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. He previously served as the editor of Inch (Bull City Press). He lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina. You can find him on Instagram at @mattpoin.
Photo credit: Alicja