Scaffolding

Alex Lemon

It would take jack-hammers 
to find that other-self. Saw-shrieks, 

elegies for taste—whiplash, 
moan & scald. This body 

is something Giacometti 
sculpted: wax & molten steel, 

the die-cast of night’s necessities.
Smaller, I beg you, smaller. 

For fear my outline is neither 
live nor dead, air dances electric

with broken ghosts. Cheeks 
absent of color: lip after the bite. 


Sticky in autumn’s poplar, the voyeur, 
who may or may not be me, sketches 
the leaf’s cursive fall. Grasshoppers sleep 

in amber. This could be feeling: not good, 
but at least not hurt. I need spells & voodoo 
to stop time. Close my eyes—bring me 

willing things, orphans waiting open-armed  
for needles, gravel-floored cellars & spiders 
the size of fists. Underwater, you cannot hear 

my favorite song: a mouth whispering 
half my name, all the sheets turned down.
Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts