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Get a copy of this writing in the Mark Fleury 2017 poetry book the Eight Wheeled Doorway of Serpent’s Head on line:

A Charcoal Drawing

Mark Fleury

A charcoal drawing
Of a death camp survivor
In a green doorway:

Approached by the rumble
Of a bus inspires a tongue to taste
The ash of self-sacrifice;

To ready my wings to lift.

They’ve got me pinned to the wall
After I spray-painted the tension between

Shoulder blades, wings,
Large eyes, and wet hair in the rain,
Long and dark like my graffiti

Under the bridge: self-portrait
Of the narrow frame they’ve chased down.
I swallowed time

Before the cops could take it away.
Not the watch on a gold chain
Used to hypnotize, or the gold coins

Behind the shower curtain of my identity.
I can’t have that, just me being healed, saved.

The Devil feels the sentence with his breath,
Like wings touching a windowpane.

Sometimes the energy pulse of my name’s death
Moves from shoulder to shoulder

Like a caught fish’s shadow,
Or like trying to escape America.

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