Cryptid wings built from kits.
Basement kids banging trash can lids
beneath penthouse bigwigs prickly
against scalp transplant ads
obscuring their vistas. Within this,
I'm middlingly tizzied when black denim
blemishes. At the patisserie, grainy screenshots
taped beside QR codes, those alleged petits fours
reduced to globular ellipsoidals. Who but you
would scoot into booths, enthusing news along
leatherette instead of roosting like loons
on refurbished stools? We critique.
It's easy enough, installing these
communal tables after demolishing
all but the most load bearing walls. But what
of us, displaced in this layout’s open space,
just desserts not possible when there's no outlet
within which to charge? We pique. By the savories,
aristocrats stand on strong hams, menacingly
peddling their yak pasties. I've had my tibia
shattered half a thousand times & now I'm lanky
as taffy microwaved on high. The beef reheats.
I'll sprout talons, scratch at cheeky fillers,
bleed out, as in the meme, my vitals
gooey like mallow’s molten sugars, granules
oozing syrups onto windowsills to cool.
If you hunch your backpack
to the front, sergeants shouldn't accuse you
of abusing lithographs. If only we’d evolved
out of anthropods, we wouldn’t incentivize
the raw god’s divine crowbar : he deinstalls
entire cosmologies just because these sticklers
refused to honor counterfeit vouchers
as payment for salvation.
Everything we feared was near
is here & we are still astride the steed,
nag & rider speeding after libertines
who scarfed our contraband
at the fire sale. How I envy their
recidivism amid the hung jurors
while I couch symptoms as syndromes
no class action’s quack will ever avouch.
Chris McCreary's most recent book of poems, awry, was published in 2024 by White Stag. He lives in South Philadelphia.
