by Jonah Howell

Artwork by W. Jack Savage

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I am stretched at your grave

and will lie

no will lie about

yet will do no doubt do

    slide back the closer

    closer to the lover

    why’d have die to

    die was too soon

    left me croon I’ll

        Fly me tooo the moooooon

    but can’t no left

    me slip off

    covers cov’ring

    ringing dancing

    round and round the

    no the breathing not breathing

    pale with cold yes must be cold that

    please be cold just

    no.

Knife out slips out scalpel

caught from Uni store that

scalpel sharp a flicky wicky

slick across the foot out

oozes sharp formaldehyde from

under lovely loverhide oh sweet

love loving darling sweet oh tangy

loves thy stench I do no did do does the

tarsal wrapped in skin nope

tendonslits and tarsal loosed

now placed in hand mmm lovely footbone

bone…bone…

Smells like lover lover lost but

footbone handed lift my hand and

mmmmm footbone

to bone yes lover

loving far beyond the grave I’m

slave to thy sweet souring flesh and

now thy bone.

Flicky friction bony drying slides along my

bony flicktion sliding yes my lover

slave me still. Our nights and days

a squelching splash a breathy flash of

vocal quivers matching hipshivers

stained world stained bowls

spraying life across our

shivering hips but

now just tarsal holds our soul our

spirits yes hydraulic pumpers jumping

straight ventricular sprays of splashing brains all

mashed up in this tarsal ooh

its ridges, lovely ridges curved like

lover’s ridges.

Microcosmic pumping joining

mem’ry of our sweaty humping

mouths unjoined but joined in churning

burns of flaming cooling melting

oneness.

Tarsal rubs up bony quivers

quiver, yes, warmshiver, yes,

spout rivers! yes! a shower spurting

life as loving we saw running over

glistening hips that now in gravestones’ shadows

shake still slaves to lover’s living shape and

pour out dead love on the cape that

shrouds dear lover’s paler form.

Pocketed tarsal.

Cover recovering.

Bone rehidden,

limply dead, once

deathtouch risen,

corpse’s smell still

lingering poison,

that so sweet it stays.

Oh, moistened love,

may I…

Cover uncovered

bone replaced and

cuddling coolly

meshing warmth with

dear, my unbreath’d

soul please take my

pulse we’ll half it,

turn, please, turn to me!

Yet still…

Cover recovered,

cuddle resumed.

The air, we’ll half it,

my love, in the dark.

Awakening cold, ah, my heat was inadequate,

dark, moistened air my love still unbreathes.

Cover reuncovered,

I step to the nightgrass.

A robin on spindly oaktwigs, it

chirps what I’d already thought.

Scalpel to limp bone,

a slit at the hilt and I

scream to the night for a

loss and a loss and a

slit down the center and

slits through the sides and my

once-beloved bony folds out

in a krovdripping string.

Stringy I string it

a heartshape atop my love’s

casket with blood as a good heart should have.

Dripping krovvy I sway to the

casketside rivers of

dead life pour out from my

now-useless face—

as what good’s a face when my

lover can’t love it, eh?

Scalpel a-scalping intestines I

creechscrapping pour out beside my love’s

deathground and up to the

heart I take fingery gripping and

slosh it on top of the cover,

that lover should have it

forever and always, amen.

At this I saunter off,

lighter, sticky, useless,

as any good runner after a good hearty run.

It was a good run, my sweatheart.