2 poems by Talia Reed
Any Man's Death
Should the sun rise, my brother has built a
gun safe into the guest bedroom’s closet,
enclosed even, with chicken wire.Should the sun rise, the train tracks will be passage
to Rubbermaid coffin baggage claim areas,
Holiday Inn airport cemeteries.Should the sun rise, I’ve gathered handfuls of
parasitic nematodes, Goldfish
crackers, webservers.Should the sun rise, his heart will skip along
its timing belt, thin its own blood, and fail
a kidney. Orotund hiss of Neptune’s
steam will keep everyone’s mouth shut.Pilar wasn’t afraid to kill a man.
“Should the sun rise, that is what it will take.”
To follow her Pablo around Spanish
caves, murdering mayors with dynamite
for poor peasants, beating fascist civilians
with farm implements;
saving on bullets.
Streetscape
The car collapses the way aluminum
cans fold down into compact discs.Someday this will all dissolve or leak out.
Random objects scatter across the highway.He was revived to some sort of living
being and flown away,like every breath has possibility.