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| elleraine lockie |  | 1. Ashes He's been to this Starbucks before Someone at a nearby table says he rotates to avoid arrest A mountain man or maybe Santa Claus look Except skinny as a stage-four Jesus Guitar on top of his grocery cart over piles of clothes and a bag of cat food Cat food for Christ's sake, when there's no cat Twenty-six degrees last night and damp Yesterday it was a moth beating against the outside glass A feverish fight for survival that I instantly knew I'd assist But my mental clock ticks slower now In considerations about connecting to a man without roots One who could become a daily complication Minutes pass that prefer moths before the man leaves his cart and heads for the alley An image of dumpster food replaces denial of my Montana heritage that decrees humane as religion Mountain Man returns from the direction of the Mobile station with a pack of Camels Rips off the plastic and lights one up Burning with it the sandwich I was about to buy him and the conscience that forbade my vanilla bean scone When I walk to the car his head and back bend over guitar scratches that no one would ever pay to hear At home I sweep up the ashes Moths that chose flames Salem cigarettes and Valium prescriptions smoldering somewhere in the past The day has disappeared in smoke 2. Breathplay When you find my body hanging . . . with a tight noose around my neck, do not look for a murderer.—Note found next to a strung-up, bottom-half-naked body of a young man His haunting could have begun in the text of erotic history from four hundred years ago When men hung publicly grew erections with the tightening rope And wet spots appeared on wool knickers right before the snap Observed by physicians who applied the concept to impotent patients Writing the second entry on autoerotic asphyxiation in a saga continued now in recreation of the sexually bored Like Him, after sex with a Playboy page the cutest cheerleader, the steady girlfriend and a call girl or two An addict after the first euphoria with himself a rope and Russian roulette When he got harder with each obstructed breath And release burst the seams of need that even two women at a time only bulged Before the police came the attorney parents who found him would have removed the black crotchless panties fallen from his hand and puddling the carpet beneath him Would have rewritten the slur of perversion into the clear print of suicide Author's Note: Up to 75% of children 9 to 16 know how to play "the choking game" . . . 25% of parents know what it is.--Dangerous Adolescent Behavior Education Foundation | |
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