Halogen Johnny Strung Among Orchids
by Mitchell Glazier
Twin golden mules ravishing
On the trucker’s camel frock
Swallow, Johnny—petrifying the tulle
Nipple-clamped roadies of the ole Mountaineer Inn
Glossy trolley restaurant
w/ pixel Johnny in the curly coat
Truckers oil utensils, slap Johnny—pup!
Saffron water crayfish pot, unspooling
Grey-ribbed corduroy cummerbunds
Fruit-vicious, moxie-lace saloon brutes
Of the slop bucket, scoring flesh of squid
Johnny’s sopping mullet crop haunts
The trucker’s fetal piggish rendering of the boy
Johnny was before he cut up his sick brother
& mailed him in a bedpan
To the spoon-fingered man
Eating rabbit in the clawfoot tub
Glassy-eyed ransom mantis, beheading
Floral symmetry
Oxen cream, gummy cherry, tea-stained lung
The trucker shuts Johnny in a seashell locket
& drafts the rune of tripe & stag’s cock purpling
By bolo tie noon
Copper crematoria illusion bodice
Johnny eats the carriage of gorgeous thin
Mummified chowder & the seven sluiced cheeks
Hung by the living wax museum
Vomitorium rib-baying & oh!
Johnny, Johnny, how dark the edges
Horn of plenty
The dead poet’s faux glove mingles the son-wolves late in pinking heat.
Childhood, the bright injection of cartoon cherries. Cradle gauze, pleather doll.
Pleasure, pain—sleeper cars twined, heel to heel.
Pills stumble in granny coats.
Copper thimbles the cocksure, swan-diving from wooden pleasure chairs.
An amusement park turkey leg scrawls my lover’s chin, cursive to yellow bandana.
Masterpiece bonnets the stepfather hook. Cuckoo clocks mantle the stooping priest,
robe cock illuminate. Enormous fruits eye toward supper.
Draw near the casserole, my woolen blood.
The anchor fastening, cocaine heart-of-paradise.
Elvis amulet, lickety split now, boy. Yellow milk.
Leonardo, 675—Fame should be depicted as covered all over with tongues instead of feathers, and in the figure of a bird.
Sir of Psycho Barn Sex, I only ever rodeoed the dose of violets
The boy dissolving in a barrel beneath the basement stair.
Nauseous in a squirrel belly coat, blue hounds bellowing.
Purple aviation loops grope, poppy-tender. All lonesome night the storybook teethes.
About the Poet: Mitchell Glazier (b.1995) is a writer born and raised in West Virginia, then born again in NYC. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and now lives in Brooklyn. His manuscript Deviltry was shortlisted in the 2020 Augury Books Open Reading Period. His poetry has appeared in Washington Square, The Cortland Review, Hobart Pulp, and elsewhere.