Double Bind

Jesse Miksic

 

Get me out your mouth,

  heretic,

           though I love a reader

 

It is a reader who makes me

  (who chews my viscous silence

           into the sounds of an unhinged animal)

 

   These lines, a body and you

 

   Furrowed brow licking fingers

 

Free this script from all shelves

           to where it becomes a cascade

           of fluids, nightshade sanguine,

 

Tainted with your illness of

           bilious associations —

  read, read

 

You, steward, oarsman across

  the subtle sea of

           scribbled anonymity,

 

  Listen closely to my gratitude,

         The supplication

              of words freed

            from the void, a

           purity deformed,

      a scraping innocence destroyed

              and hear the curses,

                  see the

                   signs

 

  The hex that rises up

  Between the lines.

 

***

Jesse Miksic is a graphic designer and writer living in Peekskill, New York. He spends his life writing poetry, nursing unfinished projects, and having adventures with his wonderful wife and daughter. Recent and forthcoming placements include Heron Tree, Drunk Monkeys, Liminality, Praxis Magazine Online, and others.