[PIT]
from "echoes, thus"
Collapsed, a
peach orphaned in the grass
& sun of late August, stem
rotted, flesh festered, I
witnessed
in the well-hollowed
bucket beneath my
ribcage a vacuous, fungus-filled
& skunking,
the leftovers
of garbage cans--What isn't
unholy. Dismembering
one from where it rooted, I
split the peach at its
seam. If only
someone would splinter
me. To be ravaged
is all I ask for. The fruit, tender
& undeserving of fingers
crude as mine, fumed
an odor like gasoline.
Throat
a moldy pit, I
swallowed, & it
tasted, slugging
down my sternum,
like the saliva
of a person like me must
when he finally kneels
in the piss-yellowed grass,
strained, beyond redemption,
broken of anything
his lungs could give.
Surrendering
palms, he prays, this
person, not
to be saved, no,
never that--no, only
to endure.