portion of artwork for Drew Kalbach's poems

Kidnapping Comma Birthdays
Drew Kalbach

I am silent        I am self-violent        I pry punches
out of a bag and force them down my gullet

I am swan-naked somewhere

Your hands are cold
around my ball-shaft             around my earlobes around

sky that smells like turpentine          somewhere else you lead
prisons           break armies
sew matchsticks and gum together
into hair into

          walls        if you were a whore I’d buy you with urine
                    I’d buy you with crabs            lice

Your mouth is open
to high school volleyballs                  to used tampons taking

peer-precedence over cadavers

Kelsey
if our oil-drums melt into candles
and the driftwood-grandmothers we use
to prop in our windows          disappear          take care

of distance              he is gagged in my basement

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