mother’s last words were stay clean

by Oisin Farriage

Artyom Korshunov

balance the image: strung out, haggard. latched in a gas station bathroom. the brutal master flesh at (house, not home) etched these yellow-purple glyphs in (skin, not bone). erosion in the low valley of your cheeks, eye to jaw. needle pierced points illumined under anti-intravenous beams, conceal where black tar permeates rhizomatous feeds; see ephemerides of childhood dreams slowly inching up your arm, infecting the brain, fleeting through star charts unrolled on aft/forearm, as of scrolls of faith, as of maps to fate. lucidity suspended in flashes of memory; seems the less you’re sober, the brighter they gleam.

some birds throw themselves from the nest —  sometimes it’s balancing mindset shifts, language games the wicked brain plays, like when razor becomes adversarial blade. this empty look betrays your mother, bedridden in your apartment. her house felt like a coffin when you put it to market, your bedroom an old man incontinent. a moment of longing where you felt the cold craterous moon moving toward your cheek, her frail hand reaching to say…

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O. Farraige writes poetry and flash fiction. He currently resides on the East Coast, US. His work has appeared in Divot, Sunspot Lit, ONE ART, and elsewhere.