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This appears in a pre-2010 issue
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A Leash that Chokes
Joshua Copeland
If you want it that bad
then do it, parade the floats
down main street towards the
drop off, leap into the vortex
of inked stardom, gut the choir, knot the
rope and leap off the Petronios’
sycamore. You and your
dull whining...
Come on,
you want it, the
yank
and
snap
of your neck,
the lick
of the fire alive.
“My parents don’t gimme me no room!”
Why delay? So you’re just going
to ponder and stutter and teeter? Suicide Hotline
is an oxymoron. Those hell bent on offing themselves
don’t ask for help. So go, and leave us to
mouth fulls of dinnertime conversation
and Steve Handler’s keggers. The wind seethes
through the branches of the Petronios’ tree, waiting for
your corpse to pendulum back and forth, your hopes
finally mum. Mrs. Petronio won’t mind.
You can do it. I have faith in the number of lives
lost
to sloth. They don’t wear skin
above the clouds, you know. Just yellow, gauzy ether,
brooks that pop a sunny sparkle,
and gaudy jellyfish floating
on the breeze.
You’re not one of us anyway. You bitch that
you were drawn incompletely, the horizontal sum of things
too spaced apart: lines stretched too taut, some diagonals
lacking, a jigsaw puzzle half-heartedly
put together, gaps where
teeth should be...Complain to Him, collapse to
your knees at His throne, you’re about as big
as His speckled and glittery
toenails.