memoir - mostly imagined

At six I wept my distance from confession booths and wafers,

Tears mechanically disinterred – trephinate from burr-ducts –

Staved beneath my eyelids for occasions such as this:

Convincing my Christian mother

To let me live cauled in limbo and be sinfully miscarried

Than sign over to symbols praying-back indentured guilt.*

*The year before, my cousin dressed himself in God,

Walked into the desert, and dashed his head against a rock.

At twelve I crumbed my language in the mutual erasement of lusting’s rubber tongue,

And couldn’t talk to boys I’d known –

Dueling piss in stream-beds beneath suburban bridges –

Now that they slurred me gay;

I bagged my breath until it staled heavy in my hollow mouth,

Released it when I dropped out, and spoke to men unshamed.*

*Three weeks before I turned fourteen, at a comedy show in the city,

The headliner said, “hooky’s not hooky when permanent,” while signing my copy of Fowl Play.

At twenty-four I’ve stripped aside most regard for ideals,

And over-greened bartered beliefs with one month’s rent of pay.

Down-face to need, rosemary links, Seed-Alt-Delete’s obseeching hands

Twist neon from the fully-loaned cabling of my veins.

“A wound gives off its own light” (as dead fish glow the ocean,

Our culture banks’ foyers are lit with the bruised glare of skin).*

*Just like you,

We’re each the same example.

Bryce Jones's work has appeared in 3:AM Magazine, Surfaces, and Burning House Press, among other publications. He tweets @cloudflotsam.