I shatter with that night hiding inside my horns, when
you tried to teach me the mausoleum dance, how to
behold myself on glassy marble graves, but I wasn’t
listening. I draped rugs across my back and lied
about being heavy. I bite with that morning hiding in
my gums, when I asked you to make me pearls, forgetting
they were yours to begin with, yours for the taking, not
my deafening treasures to clutch tightly.
I live with when the word FAG cliff dove from my throat
down into my gut, leaving a trail of lit matches on the
way, when I thought about taking garden shears across
the metal of your car, when I told people I was the axe.
I was really the lumberman. I said that being faultful wasn’t
my own, that it was God or an animal who made me
do things I lied about, tied in sacks, poured cement over,
buried under the rotting treehouse.
I will die boxed up with these war-things too, it is my only fate.
Hunter McLaren is a college graduate from Central Michigan University with a Bachelor of Science in English Language, Literature, and Writing. He also has a creative writing certificate and a minor in Ethics, Value, and Society. He is an emerging poet with eight pieces published, passionately seeking more publication opportunities. He proclaims the goal of his work is to unseat comfort and confront surreal or traumatic themes in creative and cathartic ways.