Paul Ilechko
My stink is a metaphor for sugar
consumption or a mural painted
on the side of the construction site
where you built out your famous facsimile
of yet another great European city
the water licking dark and cold on a frayed
morning of kites soaring on the wind
of bitter responsibility reclaimed as myth
I held my tongue pinched it with tweezers
until the blood ran between my fingers
it was just another crime scene smeared
with evidence everything taut
and spinal and we waited at the place
where the years converged the soft
place in memory wheat colored
and aromatic something visible to die for.
***
Paul Ilechko is the author of the chapbooks “Bartok in Winter” (Flutter Press) and “Graph of Life” (Finishing Line Press). His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Juxtaprose, As It Ought To Be, Cathexis Northwest Press, Thin Air Magazine and Pithead Chapel. He lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ.