ABI COWEN

Ink Poisoning

In this rented meat I am empty delirium. I stand in a world of dissocia, the gap between atoms, a gulf of intergalactic space. You draw flowers on my skin and we joke about ink poisoning; you say I will die, so I tell you to draw the whole forest. If I want flowers on my shell, who are you to care?

If nothingness is physically impossible, I am a masterpiece for physicists to marvel at. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” I say to them.

But I am the only one who chuckles at my joke. “You cannot escape evil without a rope,” I say to the psychologist in front of me.

On

Our Way

home from the vacuumed office we skip along the yellow lines, our mouths propped open like coat hangers. And when we look up to face the gods, glaring into acid rain, eyes burning and melting into our skulls,