[Pit].

[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.