my youth has drooped, the trees in the forest too.
beard grown thick, wet the bed black;
death calls our names alphabetically,
the rooster still crows in the afternoon, waking me.
stopped taking my meds; nothing loved anymore
but bed. could my fingers fit through the fan?
yes.
the rain watered down my coffee.
i spoke of a sycamore and spilled willows
over the ledge like children.
a green orb, spotted black, is my refuge:
a planet once imagined in a dream, and often in the day.
no one knows it there; scarce living, but enough for me.
i walked slower and didn’t kid myself.
their teeth fell out; no one’s laughing.
my head came off and the guard dog’s clapping.
wingéd cats will whisper through the grass,
and i’ll come down through the clouds,
to meet legless dogs
who lay all day in the same place,
dreaming of legs.
Pearce Green is an undergraduate studying creative writing at the University of Iowa, whose work has been published in Crashtest Mag and East Jasmine review, as well as under the names Feston Altus and Lester Petillo in Eunoia Review, Clementine Unbound, Five:2:One, East Jasmine Review, as well as Academy of the Heart and Mind, and Plum Tree Tavern.
