3 POEMS
DAVID PEAK
Pinhead
My face is an abscess
Cut the cancer off my face
Put metal in me
Don’t go into the basement
Crawlspace
Something is wrong
With the angles of the hallway
I don’t want to die
I can’t wait to die
I’ve always been here
In an explosion
As far as I know
It’s been a terrible birthday party
///
My Father’s Head
My father’s head turned inside-out,
lips pinned-back and teeth clenched,
mouth a newly disfigured dimension,
there, where the walls and the floor come together,
depending on the angle—forever vanishing.
He taught me to hammer nails on their head,
to eye the craftsmanship in the darkness of the house,
to cherish shared blood, and all the weird light
we found there.
///
Say Kill, Kill, Kill
Scorched the ribbed roof of a horse’s
Mouth on your insides, barbed, your blood
A soup, a tar-pit of cancer cells.
Fashioned new bayonets for killing,
For the purity of aggression, for the widening
Of wounds and the freeing of fluids.
A scraggly polar bear’s muzzle worn raw,
Pinked and bloody, ulcerous bacteria eating
Away at the lining of his stomach:
Moaning, “I can’t stomach this
anymore. I don’t have the stomach
for this hunger anymore.”