Life is sinking into my forehead. Memory’s
mercy swims behind me. To smell the numbers,
Megan makes me breakfast. My stupid heart wants
currents less stressful.
“You possess a talented face and gesture,”
Megan tells me. Fearfully arbitrary,
spelling a democracy’s body, feral
phonemes make widows
on their morning swim. If disgust is envy’s
palatable backside, is Kyle beauty’s
underwater city? My demon’s demon
demonstrates scuba
diving all the time. And my singing voice is
wasted on Yvette, when decreasing daylight
marks despair’s original nudge, its waves of
sinful and violent
words to float or fall on. Immutably happy
sea, transforming needs into ends; engulf me!
Evening’s loan shark hunts for the bleeding cloud in
cultures of safety.
Jake Sheff is a pediatrician and veteran of the US Air Force. He’s married with a daughter and a crazy bulldog. Poems and short stories of Jake’s have been published widely. A full-length collection of formal poetry, “A Kiss to Betray the Universe,” is available from White Violet Press. He also has three chapbooks: “Looting Versailles” (Alabaster Leaves Publishing), “The Rites of Tires” (SurVision) and “The Seagull’s First One Hundred Seguidillas” (Alien Buddha Press).