Matt Gilbert
Disaster Porn
Nothing is more delicious than oxygen
turned into gold pouring down anthills
like bleach and she, their beheaded queen.
It’s better to want than need so I wanted
her tongue before it turned to brick.
Birds rasping like secondhand smokers
from trees burned to the filter, bushes
bloody the color of black cherry merlot
as we tear off the twigs to make s’mores.
Marshmallows soft as the cave of sheets
we climbed out of, hands busy determining
the ripeness of each other’s sweet faces
like melons instead of calling our mothers
to say goodbye. Lust isn’t meaningless
or else it wouldn’t exist, so why do we
feel guilty after getting what we wanted?
For making the best of a bad situation,
roasting marshmallows into garnets
over the kissable lips of the flaming pit
that tongued open the backyard, trying
to melt the dark chocolate of her hair.
In the green, warm dark the drag mark
where she wiped her hands on the grass,
the radiation making her shadow glow
into a searchlight blinding by how lone
it shows the survivors sitting in our skin.
The world having broken up with us,
what we feared was reality was actually
reality, and hurt, you feel to stay alive
leaving is better than being left behind,
like the man who cut off his wife’s leg
with the tools he had at hand so she
wouldn’t follow him out of the sinkhole.
