Breadcrumb #376

KIM DIETZ

I missed you last night
I’ve missed you every night since

We arranged the flowers on the bedside table
Lit candles that smelled of peonies and poppy
We held the funeral buried in bed
Draped ourselves in the laughing shadows
With bottom shelf whiskey tucked in beside us
Washing it all away with the starless night

I’ve missed you every night since you’ve lost
The voice in the cavern of your throat that lulled us to sleep
Like a trapped ghost in the depths of your belly
Since my sheets were last glazed with tobacco and cinnamon and honey
Tasting the breakfast you’ve made me on your lips
You resound on my palate

Like a last meal
One I was asked to choose
A bed-sheet fit as a tablecloth
A blood-orange leaking--
Sweet with thick blushed skin
Peel shedding like a borrowed mask
And I can’t seem to contain it in one place
It keeps dripping and running and weeping down my wrist
Fighting to be held so close

And I’ve missed you every night since.

• • •

Breadcrumb #375

CLAUDINE NASH

Wherever you are in your
small corner, there is a
train rolling through you
carrying all the beings who

have ever loved the dull
colors of something or
someone to life. And

though the walls of your
room may be worn and
thick with neglect, if

you stretch this moment

so thin

that the enemy in your head
can’t whisper,

you may feel the cars
of this train speed through
all the empty stations you
have ever known,

so much so

that when you glance
at the strangers who pass
through this dim and
icy morning,

the deepest tints and
hues within you
start to vibrate,

you detect

the secret sound
the world makes
when it speaks all
its languages at once.

• • •

Breadcrumb #374

ARIELLE TIPA

and everything is so beautiful everything is organized by color and clarity and price and
sickness

tantric chocolate. herringbone flags. an ankh-shaped paperweight. hemlock shampoo. an
automaton. jinxes. this hedgehog can do your taxes. marie antoinette's snuffbox. jolly
chimps. don't watch vic morrow's death scene. phantasmagoria. crystal pepsi. the
metaphysics of a bird. a free download.

tell me good baba is there a spell for this i have one shekel one lira one rupee and
bottlecaps and my hair is oh so soft oh please

i am silkworm tender and ziegfeld glowing and stew-worthy everything is making me so
so soft

i am darling electric and tulip fever and floating and gone and everything is so beautiful i
want to cry.

• • •

Breadcrumb #373

RAX KING

A lady tells me, wake me at 42nd Street.
Colonial column of a lady, and was she fine!
Was she lovely! The gathering of age
in rivulets of wrinkle, hair silvering thin itself.

I think, it has been years since I was anything
a stranger might call fine. It warms my guts:
to be un-fine. Greasy and grimy, even fresh
from the bath. Like a rock a worm calls home.

I let the train pass 42nd Street before I wake her just to see
how haughty she will snip at me, but she shrugs,
her back as straight in sleep as a shaker chair,
snaps her eyes back shut like a crocodile’s.

• • •

Breadcrumb #372

JD DEHART

Let me dress,
that thread you pull,
let me weave it
and wind it up,
like a spinning top,

Please say it's
my color, please compliment
me.  I try to stand on my
own two feet but I slip
my teeth across kind words,
how they fill me.

I'm just another restless
voice looking for someone
to say, Well said.

I still have my wisdom
teeth, but I lack the wisdom
to stop dressing up,
to stop my stage-prancing
vocalizations.

The performance continues
until I'm tired
of the masks and all.

• • •