Two Poems

Apothesis

Infection. I loll my head to the side in
the dim stillness, you loll your head into
mine. So easy to lose track of days among
macaroni, comic books, roaches crushed on
peeling white paint, legs circling the air
above their caved-in selves. Tall fields of wheat
are growing, somewhere. I am telling
truths here in the dumb distilled echoes of
rented rooms and you are crying. I’ll be crying soon,
fat wet tears like jellyfish. We are monsoon.
We flood, we funeral. We do damage to ourselves
and emerge, wrecked and reaving. We torpedo.
We sink to the ocean floor. Let fish swim through our
ribcage. Let them learn from our mistakes.
Let them love like love like love. Our faces
gleaming sharply in the vicious, bitter tide.

Slot Machine

to walk the prison fence with a backpack
full of shivs & avocados softly calling
names beneath the stars
but i digress:

how we got here is
a much more interesting story—
something to do with shattering
your grandma’s best china
& snorting lines of pale blue

porcelain all night
& pressed close kissing
in the darkroom
i said you’ve got to be less negative
(that was a photography joke)
& you said shut the fuck up

/

skimming light from drainpipes
into dirty palms, storing it in mason jars
to gather dust in basements with
unused treadmills, cookbooks, songs

you with your neck tattoo of wilted amaryllis
& me with my mistakes

our eyes spun wildly
in our skulls, jackpots
we gassed up the car
& you said let’s go already
our tongues sprang from our mouths
& coins poured out our throats

here there will be no probation

---

Zachary Evans works at a comic book shop in New Orleans. He swears he has a black belt in karate but nobody ever believes him. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Fourteen Hills, Dose Rate, Butterknife, and The Tulane Review. You can almost definitely find him in bed.