Robert Beveridge

Cult of Personality

You assassinated the llama

who sold cosmetics

at the dollar store—something

about slaughterhouse liberation

and mascara armaments.

You didn’t know she was

a popular stand-up comedian

in the off hours. Did you close

the lids of your laptop,

the toilet, your eyes before

you pulled the trigger? The feds

want to know. They grow impatient.

Declining Industry

sample seven aquifers against the foreign legion, raze every theater in a six mile radius of the lion’s den, and perhaps the gods of water, rust, moth will be appeased. I sacrifice my shirt, but it proves the merest snack in the face of an army who flutters to a front unknown against an enemy not sighted yet. Blind and insensate we drive ever forward, test the water in the evenings for—what? We have not been told but we know when the results are correct we will watch billions of eyes rise to meet us, shine with a hunger that even the most exquisite Cifonelli fails to light.

Dreadnot

I mean I gotta ask you why you think

the dull flat-footed lumpy beast two steps

away from the glue factory who won’t

even get out of hay in the morning

unless you tip grain mash into his trough

is ever gonna set foot on a track

much less win a race

Well I’ll tell ya I gotta wonder why

I think that dull flat-footed lumpy beast

I’m talkin to who won’t even get

out of bed in the morning without

a Bushmill’s is ever gonna cash a bet

and yet here you are with a few dollars

in your wallet

Haptic

convalescent survey the tiniest note

bad, cantilevered crescendo away

the crouched mood. twilight sleep

and rain dogs, streaked away

the shine, the wandering patina

in the night’s adopted mien.

gather round, ye senses,

and we’ll bury the shifted barb,

convey the ivory puddle duck

a tortured salmon skillet farm.

yet the dun will rise, my liquor

screech, against the crowded

vestibule—a cracked and wafted

velvet ice, a pith who needs

a core. just let it go, it’s netherdesk.

Poisoned Sleep

This bed is hard, ridged,

but the sleeper does not move.

No shift for comfort here. People pass, look down.

Some stop and wait a while

to see if the sleeper will rise.

Sticky

Our boots had melted

into puddles in the flowerbed,

joints locked into place

for the kind of trip where

we would be thrown

into the hold. The shop

owner insisted a pound

of flour was seven

and six despite no grain

in this year’s crop. We

asked for fireworks instead,

received two bags

of horehound as compromise.

We Slid Down the Trail

a rainbow of braces

in the sky, most back

but knee at the pots

of gold, surround us

as we stagger home

under the weight

of all the dog food

we bought at 50%

off. That we had two

chinchillas and an emu

didn’t seem to enter

into the calculations.

Robert Beveridge makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry on unceded Mingo land (Akron, OH). He published his first poem in a non-vanity/non-school publication in November 1988, and it's been all downhill since. Recent/upcoming appearances in The Green Silk Journal, In Parentheses, and Wales Haiku Journal, among others.