Matthew Bruce Harrison's writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming inThe Texas Review, Sixth Finch, The Cincinnati Review, The Carolina Quarterly, The Saint Ann's Review, Yemassee, Crab Creek Review, and others. He lives in Minneapolis. ---------
You Said It
He tips one
last one
to the absence
masquerading
as a chair drawn
close
to the mass
of suicidal
mosquitos
that wrong the light
from the wax
cavity
near spent
like us all—smoke-dyed
candle on the bier
posed as a patio
table. He toasts
the glaring hole: There
you go, cholesterol, cost
of gas killing, social
security and a saw blade
jammed into my tailbone,
Jesus, a septic tank
leak and this block a spa
for venereal bugs,
youngbloods—always
the microscopic stuff
lives on. Lawn
a mangy troll back
passed over, shotgun
mess of a home soon
paid off, I guess. Look
straight: walls, webs. You
can say no different. You sat here
lit April a year back today
and revealed too much meaning
we needed a game quick.
So we took up napkins.
We cut masks with butter
knives—grim Cheney, grinning
Bill. We sucked in the paper
lips and blew faces
into the citronella flame.
Just like I said, you said,
and I said You said it,
and that was it, ashes of a bad
farewell and our bug-bite
scabs in the grass.
mess of a home soon
paid off, I guess. Look
straight: walls, webs. You
can say no different. You sat here
lit April a year back today
and revealed too much meaning
we needed a game quick.
So we took up napkins.
We cut masks with butter
knives—grim Cheney, grinning
Bill. We sucked in the paper
lips and blew faces
into the citronella flame.
Just like I said, you said,
and I said You said it,
and that was it, ashes of a bad
farewell and our bug-bite
scabs in the grass.