harsh simplicity
a metal hairbrush
a metronome
blood in a dumpster
insanity
cockroaches the size of large mice scale the chipped and filthy walls of a rented room in the city
now and then lighting aloft to hover in nauseating partial loops
on crude scissory wings
stands shivering and sexless erect on his bare gritty mattress
in the noonday sunlight streaming through the room's shadeless windowpane
to corral one of the bugs
with a red plastic cup
of the kind found at keg parties
the skin of the prisoner's palm thrills beneath the dungbeetle's dank crawly feel
he slips it live into his mouth
swallows
it is almost too much to bear
he feels a stirring
in the soft tissue
just beneath his sternum
and thinks of how he too
was once just a fetus
|