CeCe13
Poem of the day
We inhaled slag wool in the throat
of a Tennessee summer, installing cheap
can lights, like capping off gapped teeth,
to illuminate an emptied-out dentist office.
Back and forth we passed saws and drills.
Each of us balancing on top of ladders,
I listened to his slurs bleed into conspiracy
theories. I listened to how his mind split
the country into a wound we could not suture.
For four days my right hand had echoed
with a phantom pain, like a dog bite,
from where I touched a live wire. I recoiled
at everything: the sound of his voice
like a screw being stripped, the slightest lean
in the ladder beneath me. When we had finished,
covered in sweat, dusted in particle matter,
quiet except for the interstate running
like a generator outside, beneath the gaudy lights
we’d just installed, he took off his shirt, lifted
his arm, and pointed to where a bullet had entered
and never exited. He asked, maybe jokingly,
if I wanted to touch it. And if not for fear,