__ Catch / Confetti

SAY YOUR PRAYERS AND PICK YOUR BATTLESHIP CONFIGURATIONS ‘CAUSE I’M GONNA SINK YOUR GRANDPA’S SAILBOAT

Troy

from Halflife by Meghan O’Rourke

We had a drink and got in bed.

That’s when the boat in my mouth set sail,

my fingers drifting in the shallows of your buzz cut.

And in the sound of your eye

a skiff coasted— boarding it

I found all the bric-a-brac of your attic gloom,

the knives from that other island trip,

the poison suckleroot lifted from God-knows-where.

O all your ill-begotten loot— and yes, somewhere,

the words you never actually spoke,

the woven rope tethering

me to this rotting joint. Or so it goes, 

our love-wheedling myth, excessively baroque.