by Connor Donovan
We don’t speak of it anymore: the hilltop
bonfires holding natural light, bottlenecking
the cans & burning them green. The cathedral
clock tower above us like a jaundiced eye.
Being passed an apple packed with burnt nubs
—sucking where everyone had already sucked.
Holding undulating flame above my nose
like a pig slow roasting its own body
as ash dripped like wet blood onto the dirt.
In a letter I once wrote oh, to bare the weight
of life. I used to write to wipe my lips.
It is all still so clear: all the horses
in that damned field, drowning in gnats.
All those nights alone, making thin incisions
in my thigh, forming pairs of lips. Pulling in smoke
to replace breath. To burn amidst aisles of dead
grass, the scent of spoiled fruit, unable to see beyond
the field. That time my mother slept beside me
checking for a pulse throughout the night.
I woke when the first sun yearned to shine
on the last of me, full body pocketed in a swell
of heat. Beside me, her laying on the floor
& I wanted so badly to be guiltless.
After years, I again wanted.
Connor Donovan (he/him) is a mathematics graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a winner of the Healthline Zine Ekphrasis Contest and his work can be found or is forthcoming in Ghost City Review, Eunoia Review, JAKE, Stone of Madness, the engine(idling, and underscore_magazine, among others.
Hawaii Pacific Review 