Filth
In the suburbs, through the windows, the houses leak their big ideas. One television then another darkens. A man holds a Bic under foil and sucks the rising static through a plastic straw. For a time, I take a break from my body—I push it into a corner and tell it to stay. It trembles. A sheet collapses across a mattress, and the brain goes dark. In my closet, a choir of sweaters raise their empty sleeves as they reach their silent crescendo. A woman drags her black Pomeranian out of the house and down the block. Its puny legs whir. A dozen dream bodies climb the sky’s slick rope. From their bedrooms, the children, in unison, describe the way the wind nudges them. Their hands turn up with what they cannot say like smoke from a ghost’s mouth. Their parents sit in the corner; a dark halo seeps into the carpet around them. A few houses dot the neighborhood with their yellow lights. My body stands at attention while the streetlights rain halogen into the cul-de-sac’s aluminum circle. The woman, stooped over her dog’s waste, is pulled up the roofs’ slight pitch into a dark infinity. The man and his foil glide down the block. Fleets of bodies swarm around him, whispering why he should unzip his skull and sneak away. My body scratches at the bedroom door. It tells me how much it misses me, so I climb back in: my arms wrap around my arms, my legs entwine with my legs. The children dream of dead children. The parents dream of dead children. The houses, behind their sheer curtains, rattle with shadows.
Brian Clifton is a PhD. student at the University of North Texas. His work can be found in Pleiades, Guernica, Cincinnati Review, Salt Hill, Prairie Schooner, The Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, and other magazines. He is an avid record collector and curator of curiosities.