DRECK

JOHN OLDENBORG

PERFECT ALEXANDRINES

-

the blonde smalls of your hair
pleating everything peach
dogsong an alternate
shadow hormone for dreams
your face was bald and twinned
dreamrotting on the couch
in all my favorite shirts
clay from your buried nose

--

you vomit on my chest
promise you are okay
smelled dearly of peachfuzz
and old lamb formula
can you keep down warm milk?
juice from sugar droppers?
I wipe the furred cheek
of the faultless cockroach
sorry for gutting you
your one and only home

---

dreaming about the new
volatile minerals
a peachling whisked away
from six ingrown branches
cast into a copper
tenebroso your tears
bore an almond contour
and wore the castaway mink
I got beat with hugo boss
belt buckles and you said
you could relate you said
I was so beautiful
boy toy in avant-garde
instruction manuals
a pale sunflower still
brightening the concrete


COLLECTIVELY DECIDED

Theatric light once bent
into my family’s junk store Everyday
I’d squeeze the hydraulic ether
back into the weeping fuel cell
through perforated steel:

Meaning retreats as helium
from the sphincter of a birthday’s
balloon animal A convalescent
orangutan set in a roseate shade—
Off-Purple The sun progresses
His pigmentation sinking
closer to the floor

I wasn’t an inquisitive child
groomed on NASCAR and milk
peeling away at toe scabs
ugliness like
buzzards like
toes in the grain silo
this was…
this was the reason for…
his curriculums against pencil drawings
picture day taped to the truck door

Dad reverse-engineers the buried hatchet
polyurethane flaking
He doesn’t believe in whirligig or
apologies written in Microsoft Office

There are minerals that won’t
oxidize when exposed to air
or companion phosphates

I don’t buy the oxygen machine
the sea plane or the gyrodyne

So the hatchet is remade:
bit of titanium
poll of brass
There is a light that fails
and in the attic—
one that doesn’t


MILDER LUCIFER

I could know more
about the Midwest
At its center the heart
a butterfly in a seed jar
fluttering

Someone planted
the forbidden tree
Showed me
how to lariat
the golden calf Lasso
the plastic steer So…

what? God will turn me in
-to dirt? Shame me down
rigorously in His ranchita?
Alone with some advice
beside His other
godling roses “ease into

what’s manageable”
—Wrong: give in to ugly Words
“shit” or “suffuse” Early on
the veranda stunk
in my head Think once
I’m depressed
then five times fast
shit shit shit shit shit—
suffuse, suffuse, suffuse, suffuse,
suffuse

Things could be worse

I paralyzed my sister’s pet butterfly
misted his wings with a sugar dropper
Only there is no magic against death Only

evidence:
arrowheads
favorite shirts
pop guns in the road
teeth burnt out like stars
His gnome visibly startled; flensed
like “Bloodhail” on vinyl

John B. Oldenborg (he/him) called Tallahassee home. He recently graduated from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas with an M.F.A. in creative writing. His work appears or is forthcoming at Secret Restaurant Press, Petrichor, Tilted House, Masks, Hobart, Misery Tourism, Rougarou, Grotto, and elsewhere online.