The 2River View 18.2 (Winter 2014)
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D. B. Goman

With Perseph

He loved her red hair—the dyes of H.—cut
shorter in the heat waves. She was hot
in her bath robe dancing for the cursed
like him; her mother was sick, hard loaves
of salty bread mouldy on the counter ever
since she left; her father in the clouds chased
swans to ride. This was his descent, strings
resonant, guiding to her torch and his tears
when he played her his blues on an electric
guitar; he had to look back when he got up-
stairs, her lizard tongue firing cracked skulls.

Lightning split her down the middle, using
pomegranate seeds as birth controlled in
the basement where her furnace branded
his hands so he couldn't touch another; her
children were spring for a tribe ovulating
for nothing, fertility masks funny at a moon,
endangered of eating their own blood, exo-
skeletons breaking in the slash-and-burn
rituals threatening his backyard, its plums
and cherries ripe for canning. Wild flowers
he ate raw so he'd have color in the dark,
breathing smoke and ash for a tart return
to her barren beauty when the bulbs boiled
cold white at her feet; bracketing him—briefly—
with her toes he gave up playing to kill placid
Morpheus forever so he could wear his face
and sleep down there in all the ember seasons.

Noah in the Kitchen

Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.

Gauguin

He looks at the stove clock, counting off the hours
for the big day. Chaos in the kitchen—pots filled
with water for who knows how long; sharp utensils  
to sort the freeze-dried packages—lots of back-up,
two of everything, even the hermaphrodites in a pail.

He's pricked each one for blood samples too, keeping
a centrifuge by the fridge; his eyes a microscope
watching for dangerous mutations; the rain on the roof
forty bars of kick-ass blues with him on the hammer;
his home a vessel, his heart immortal, a floating parable.

They couldn't be saved; degenerate, indifferent, or just
meek, ready to give up and decay—unlike the thrashing
ones he admired, extinct before his time; washed away
or buried in mud, their covenant smashed on the rocks,
he laughs by the popping toaster—this earth is all mine.

D. B. Goman has an MA in history. His poetry, stories, and travel essays have appeared in Ditch, Eye Magazine, Jones Av., Poetry Montreal, Quarry, and Storyacious.

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