Dan Leamen

Kill Mechanism

Song of Robert Williams

Man:
A stiff shoe clicks, dark alley,
       a woman
              cradles moonlight,
noose of her breasts.

Emergence:
Father’s fist to mother’s weeping
robin chest, tiny lungs spliterizing in cold
clutch of winter, his earthquake of knuckles               
              plowing Jupiter’s lexicon across her flesh.

Stir:
In you, the sullied mechanism awakens. It is a pacing crow,
       spray of worms in septic beak, its trembling
claws fix slick corsage of talons to your palms.

Girl:
In a dirty subway you stagger,
       Armageddon’s keys spilling
from your slit gut,
              a sultry din crackling tremors
                                           in her cherry skin held
                            on Earth dusted with snow.

Flesh:
Bristling plumage of feathers erupt,
              talons click-click,
                            mechanism uncorks a herd of rage
glistening with love, scratches
a rusted fingernail
                            across blown ruby jugular – Robert
you quilted her skin in burns,
              a clown make-up dressing sunken-eyed mask
of mildew to curtain your rotten
                            boards, your crooked
                  cellar, your slanted stairwell, your heart,
                                                        a broken drier full of wet socks.

Arachnid:
You tore feathers,
              took revenge upon angel
    who placed in you a stream of hollow pomegranates
                            where there should be blood.
              An arachnid nest in your torso forks,
looses insect’s thin hooks to clutch along her throat.
                                                                      A tongue,
              not your own in your mouth rings
                                          out shadow from between your teeth, a thing
dripping in whiskey and ash wraps her body in frail cloth:
                                          “Our hands are two ripe fruit dangled before the lips of Adam.”

Dawn:
Tufts of splendor
              flaunt from shredded pit
         lotusing on her lip – acknowledge frailty,
we have for eons mistaken light for heaven.

Author Bio

Dan Leamen resides in Boulder, CO. He is currently the Writer in Residence for the Denver Minor Disturbance Youth Poetry Program. Dan has toured the US and Canada reading his poetry at diverse venues ranging from Brown University to the Bow of the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA.