- Bray McDonald
Working Late in the Word-Shed
Working Late in the Word-Shed
Ravenous for a particular word that would work wonders
in translation I sit in a square room of light.
The silence palpable.
I cuddle with an inspiration-sore and impotent Muse.
My beneficent consort exhausted by the recent
consummations so efficacious and draining.
It is often a vain attempt to render perceptions. An exercise
in inadequacy. The fury rising like the crackling of something electric.
Skull itching with the pyretic passion of depraved poets.
Tormented by nostalgia and the insincere influence of time.
Caveman dreams and the dirty history of roots. For now
merely desperate with my long-legged Muse ham-strung.
The word-shed silent and empty as the eye socket
of a dry skull. Odin’s blinding price of wisdom.
The membranes of the blood static in suspension.
The brain shriveled as rotted fruit. Nothing coherent
surfacing on the horizon. The sterile iniquity of a nocturnal
pen-pusher up for another dose of no good.
Afraid to die without a song someone else has heard.
—Bray McDonald