DRECK

TIM FRANK

HORROR HIGHWAY

There’s a taxi heading north,
Crying gasoline,
Drinking blood.
Let’s go
To Cairo
Where the sun
Ties a noose
Around the clouds
And heaves a smile
Like televisions
Teeming with head lice.
Looming by the highway
Are adverts for the church
Selling whores to little kids,
Because they can.
Everybody’s high,
Everybody’s dying.
There’s a ghoul
On the border
Falling through the gaps
Of staged silhouettes.
Drivers nurse their wounds,
Stub their cigarettes
On their fists,
Then merge with the traffic
Like ants under fire
In a jaundiced wonderland.


WAKING UP

I wake up
in a haze
of nostalgia
and the horror
of dragging time.

Algebraic lies
and conjugation blues
blast like class alarms.

I’m late for school—
it’s obscene.
I live among the hours
only dreams can translate.
My feet are caught
in lakes
of chipped teeth,
and homework
arranged like blades
around my throat.

Watch me headbutt
my doppelgänger
from another age,
then crawl back into bed.

No, there’ll be no school today.
It won’t be found
in lost tomorrows, either.
School is just a cigarette
smokescreen,
choking kids
in age-old constellations
constantly reborn.

Tim Frank’s work has been published in Bending Genres, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, The Forge Literary Magazine, New World Writing and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and 3x Best of the Net. His debut chapbook is, An Advert Can Be Beautiful in the Right Shade of Death (C22 Press ’24) His sophomore effort is, Delusions to Live By (Alien Buddha Press ’25).