Ehren Bivins: two poems
NOTES AFTER THE APPENDIX
You've ruined me. Turned away my last. Hopes. Utter things
like, "You had to go."
I can't fathom your selfishness. I'm inflamed, damn. Right.
You jettison important friends like wet ballast.
Go ahead, jerk.
Have me out. Make the necessary surgical changes.
Put
me in a mason jar. Shelve me.
I couldn't add. That we've spent. Good times. Never face to face.
I just stewed in your black bile juices.
And what will occur.
Next? Gall bladder evacuation? Missing Kidney?
It is a
most inconsiderate subtraction.
When that. Young tart. Brushes. My scar. Your stigmata.
Remember
my sacrifice.
Remember I could have
killed you.
Remember you cut me out
but I have very close friends
on the inside.
PROSTHETIC HEAD
The hole itched. Man alive I know mine
salvation lies in a box in some warehouse
in Memphis.
Do I have enough money to
buy it? Sweetest Yaweh let the fire rain down
along with arm
prosthetics, leg prosthetics,
we all have our needs. A clerk hands me
a form to fill out and behold
a red dragon and
a woman clothed in the latex head of the sun. Wrap
my hands around it and run
screaming through
the garden of Eden guarded by an angel with a
burning sword; when I get home
the first head
doesn't fit, I have to try it all over again and again
the plagues came and river of
blood on the edges
of my workshirt as I fit the new prosthetic on tight.
Everyone will see that I am
whole Jesus-Christ-man
of advice-put-all the sinner's head's-in-a-vice. I can
have a new life of
wormwood and locusts and wild
honey. My head is made of PVC and has two glass eyes.
How do
I live? The hole itched. I covered it up.
Ehren Bivens has appeared online previously in The 13th Warrior Review and Thunder Sandwich. He is a
writer, songwriter and painter and lives in Franklin, Tennessee.
