poem || Keith Higginbotham

Festooned

and full;

the sex’s skin closet the redness
the sidewalk communion baggage—

thirty years old, behind advice

daylight is skin it is malted

peacefulness, a plastic pillow, napalm

juice just where the words hurt

dirty faces their heads cloud me that utterly
my winter clothes no imagine
see: my back scooping the menace

of gender I’m almost clear about

the stupid pleasure of everything