Blotch My body makes of this country a flagrant museum of pain / endless shelves bowed with incessant shivers of glass / the ways in which I fail myself everyday / field- dressed & floating / face down in white corridors / mouth torn wide / I live with the privilege to swallow power forever / I coat everything / I cling / like cigarette smoke in dive-bar carpet / the dirty green ocean of pool table felt / I cling to every piercing warp with moon-silver eyes / my ill- lit swarm / my glass-sharp mist / glittering in the ditch / shattered glass sharp / frozen pipe water / bloating the old walmart / where they hold scared kids now & men scrub their artwork away / erase their crayon families / the deep-slashing lash of loss / of young time taken away / captivated by captivity / I remind you & remind you / my khaki men / glutted with clipboards / leaking deprivation / open containers to contain taken children / the government’s torn green tongue laps to the beat of my torn green heart //
Blotch I am the dragger of good kids down dead roads / the grater of good skin on ditch- doomed gravel / you moth against the migraine-light of my contaminated summers / I am born of patriarchy & prednisone / I plummet to pierce / to blister / to prod / at your pristine river with my stubby little concussion / I am the only carnivorous kind of glue / spines tucked in / waiting / until your first fog flinches / your first hackles raise / a moment too late / drawn in & drowned in my cool blue pool / my ripples of illegible light / my muzzle reeks into an unconvincing smile / my mouth a tunnel / guzzling a traffic of souls / my traps are no accident / they reset themselves & sing you away from the moon- lit ocean / toward the condo-lit shore / where flocks of white corridors careen / undeterred by any kind of border / this is a hell of my own making / like the sigh of a rifle / like weaponized dogs / like horses of fire galloping up through the heart of a high-rise / I gift it to you / I am the rift torn between loved ones / my hell is yours now / you make a new home of its tatters.
Adam Fell is the author of two books of poetry: Dear Corporation, (Forklift Books 2019)and I Am Not A Pioneer. He has had more than thirty poems published in various journals and magazines, including Tin House; Crazyhorse; Forklift, Ohio; Diagram; Sixth Finch; jubilat; Ocean State Review; Poets.org; Pinwheel; Matter; and others. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Edgewood College in Madison, WI, where he co-curates the Monsters of Poetry reading series.
