"Bloody Nest" by Sean Kilpatrick

We stay on our eggs, 

lest they live.

That’s how we sleep 

in god’s palm, 

crushed into dreams,

hatched to see the beauty 

of our smothering. 

Life is the journey 

home of dirt 

beneath our fingernails.

The field expands regardless 

of being barren. 

Fire tiptoes at the periphery,

accruing residue,

orgy on a broomstick

that can’t take off.

There is a caliber of throe 

too big to support its corpse.

We rip out our medicine 

as the finality approaches,

tail after tail pinned on 

Satan, till he faints.

The soul is that viscid space 

between dart and corkboard 

where thoughts go keelhauled.

There are some planes of impulse 

too grand for questioning, but 

we were already nostalgic for grass 

when the first ape stood upright. 

The sky demands its demons 

bud to look like us.

Sacrifices rung by rung, a sum 

shored up pillaging girls a town over,

because most of ours are too willing.

We squeeze their mother’s 

breastmilk down the sink.

________

Sean Kilpatrick studied forensic photography, holds a Master's in writing, is published or forthcoming in: Boston Review, Columbia Poetry Review, evergreen review, NERVE, FENCE, LIT, VICE, BOMB, DIAGRAM, New York Tyrant, Sleepingfish, Obsidian, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Quietus, Hobart, young mag, forever mag, The Collidescope, La Petite Zine, Pindeldyboz, Expat Press, tragickal, fluland, Terror House, Jacket2, Exquisite Corpse, Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks, The Malahat Review, Alpha Beat Soup, Safety Propaganda, Misery Tourism, Animal Blood Magazine, Apocalypse Confidential, Countere, and wrote several books.

Sean Kilpatrick is @Sean_Kilpatrick @sean_kilpatrick

 https://linktr.ee/seankilpatrick