sawzall

(there is) (no end) (to my hate) (how much) 
(i said) (to see you) (i promised) (i wouldn’t) 

(hurt)     (you again)   (want to feel)             (taste)  

(to experience)   (i said)   (i didnt want)     (your love) 


(i was)     (sabotage)   (i am)       (not like)        (my father)


(my mother)                  (curly hair)                 (my preference)  


(water) (not like)   (you)      (i am)       (not playing)



(my trauma) (a game) (red)           (like water)



(she makes) (me feel)       (like)            (stabbing)              (myself)




(a home)       (you’ll never)       (wreck)    (myself)         (against)




(a lie)      (your wall)     (has horns)       (i brace)   (for impact)

if you see your daddy on the road, kill him 

a polaroid of
my ten million exes. women and men. 
i sit quiet with my devotion. grinding my toothless
jaw like some chiding cow. a new monolith 
i had wanted to build (Desire)
frail greed. brain bludgeoned by Baghdadi IEDs. 
a vacant ache pushing oily fingers 
from phosphoric soil.

at night, a cigarette burns through 
silver halide. a stupid criminal is one 
who gets caught. his tongue fat with rum. 
hearings, testified. disability, cashed.

a child’s bird
song of desire. it calls and mother
answers. every question satisfied.

i wanted song. my image
reversed, stuttered on the branchy horizon.
Don’t embarrass me.
i had a child (Desire) because 
i believed in hope. a better 
illusion than my Self. but Desire is single. 
It is one half of a moment, waiting.

as though to assign some language to my will 
can make it happen. i don’t understand 
the confidence of “No.” and yearning feels 
better than love. change my mind.

Elle Nash is the author of the novel Animals Eat Each Other (Dzanc Books) and the short story collection Nudes (SF/LD Books). Her work appears in BOMB, Guernica, New York Tyrant and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine and a fiction editor at both Hobart Pulp and Expat Literary Journal.