Photographer: Noble Mathew

Haruspicy

The five o’clock news augured geese,
crimson and pallor, twisted
chaos geometries on the periphery
of memory. Immovable omnipresent specters
honking like twelve car pile-ups
on a plywood horizon, painted
with scars squeezed from plastic tubes
on fifty-eight Halloweens.

Those quick walks behind the strip mall
always stopped at the alcoved dumpster,
stretching further and further until the day
we no longer needed to play chicken with the moon.
A day we could dye our innards goldenrod
without court date side effects.

It only felt like another week
before our parking lot parties moved
indoors, seven days stretched
into enough tragic tapestry
to keep white dwarfs from trespassing
into barren living rooms: a suicide
obfuscated by historical preference,
an overdose’s phone line rumba,
half a dozen prison clauses.
The predawn drive from D.C.
killed the rest of us a little, too.

A tiny kingless empire
with no great ruin to boast
but whispered recollection of storm clouds
formed in a fog of dissatisfaction;
a tribe of fractured shamans.
We were the lost and forgotten
children of Bacchus, satyr-legged
miscreants with baseball bats
and chalices bought from flea markets.

We searched for our heritage
in bottles and ponds, in dilated rats
and rolling papers. What we found
was that our skin glowed pomegranate
under interrogation lamp flashbacks
no matter how often we showered.

What we found was a multitudinous
divinity that owed us nothing
but the revenge of consequence.

What we found was infinite
and empty
beyond the flimsy set.

The five o’clock news foretold
mad haruspex in Green Run.
Cassandra pleading in a pant suit,
a small speaker dripping
vagrant static. Eidolic entrails
eternal in presence, incalculable
in prescience. Our names writ
with blood and algae
in the spilled guts of history.