The Sun Yells Hallelujah on the Creek’s Skin

Clay Cantrell

 

O tongue I run a tract allowed. Damask cap doner shrinks spooling and the devil
shines like heaven in the oak boughs. Let me gom the joy let me gom jaybird talk
curled heavy in tonsils o tongue god is vengeance and talks scat to his mothers.
Afterbirth tastes metallic. O tongue, overtaken by epithelium. Epithelium darling
fawns shoot vermillion self-coaxing like heaven beyond the oak boughs. Tonsils
rank and yet somehow aluminum shake me. The whole linearity rings blue notes
feather-like among the oak boughs. The devil is in theory a pulled nail a grommet
tonsil the least of these sparrows intact, gomming with toys in the stain down
where tires rot. I forsake o tongue in order to taste death dilly this shaking talk
when tensions grow fists through glass, rotten livers, a face looks like me in death
but stays pealing jaundiced sky. The devil pisses himself the family organ clangs
the way a rotten squash clangs dully and I know death runs a tract allowed.

 
 

Clay Cantrell’s first poetry collection, “The Landfill Poems,” was published by Red Dirt Press in 2016. Other work can be found in Birdfeast, New South, and Deluge. He makes drone music and lives in Tulsa.