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The Last Life

From a past life I am warning you that I have come
into my grand unified theory. My cheeks are swollen,
my tongue changed, I know every dirty bruise on me
hides a windrose or hydrangea. The latest moon outlives
us. I have faith in its flood of electrical slogans. I dreamt
the bodies irradiated that terminal hall like a few violets
in the mud; via the glass, the violent view, a military jet
blooms its buds. I did not mind so much the dreaming,
and yet I still desired to make my way over, to cross in
to your threshold. Under the departure screen I slept so
the numbers would not see me. I was just an avatar
in the prayer room resting or resurrecting. Who still
remembers the Nabateans? The queue was over. After
the drones, life after life, the heritages were in danger.
I folded myself with the headlines so that I would have
nothing to declare. Believe me when I tell you this:

 

> I was not going to kill anybody / I was undecided / I pressed the buttons
to check myself in / I lived it / I escaped it


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in PBS Bulletin, Ambit, amberflora and The Willowherb Review. He was the winner of the 2017 Poetry Book Society Student Poetry Prize and shortlisted for the inaugural Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize. He is currently a postgraduate student in Edinburgh, Scotland.

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