Role Play

by Chris Fox

 

Tonight, I’m the world’s foremost lepidopterist.

You enter through the window and force me, at gunpoint,

to swallow the eggs of the dreaded Novalis Blue:

once warmed, you remind me, they’ll hatch,

larva devouring the host

from the inside-out,

replacing flesh with moonlight.

Already I feel caterpillars ripple along my bones,

diligent fingertips

translating me into Maeterlink stanzas.

Vertebrae, mushroom-pale, unbutton one by one,

my final breaths turn azure.

I am a poem in French now, metamorphosis complete.

You’ve changed into your Composer’s costume,

white wig luminous with moths.

You sit down and set my words to music,

set what’s left of me to you.

 

 

Fifty Shades of Text Me the Fuck Back

 

I’m John Cusack standing outside

the bedroom window of your cemetery,

holding up a Ouija board like it’s a boombox.

 

I haven’t heard from you in a while.

 

My bedroom is a desert island.

For companionship, I’ve drawn a face

on the coconut of my own skull.

I think you must be drinking the messages

out of all the bottles I set adrift.

 

The last four decisions I’ve made

spell out HELP when seen (and ignored)

by rescue plane buzzing overhead.

That faint rumbling beneath your feet

is the reverse-skywriter I hired,

tunneling out in cursive eight feet below the ground:

I miss you, if you’re into it.

 

 

The Furniture

 

The furniture remembers that day

Your friends hid behind it to surprise you.

That was a few years ago.

Hasn’t happened since, or at least

Not since that other person

Who often shared the couch

And the chairs

And the bed with you

Stopped coming over.

 

Another birthday.

Between the cushions of the couch you find

An impossible sixty-eight-cent coin.

A game token lost years before?

No—spare change from various places around the apartment

Congealed into a single gift.

All the furniture chipped in.

Surprise.

 

 

 

BIO

Chris Fox is a poet and librarian based out of Greensboro, NC. His work has appeared in numerous journals, including Rosebud, Treehouse Magazine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Oddball Magazine and others. His poem “You” was a runner-up for the William Stafford award, and his poem “Scorpions” was nominated for the Rhysling Award. He is currently at work putting the finishing touches on his first chapbook, “Time Travel Love Poems”.