You expect to see a sight more than me,

something more than rags and sawdust

living in a house of bones. I’m the pin-

prick of light that falls between the shoulder

blades, the foul syllable uttered in slander.

Not one thing leaves my body without asking.

I’m once removed from almost lost         

and found. I’m the sheer hatred of numbers,

the utter impossibility of what is possible.

I lie at the bottom of every absurd notion.

The aftermath is sticky sweet and spread

like rat poison in the brain’s basement,

which floods with unreasonable expectations.

You see, after me comes the deluge.

I’m the harbinger of grave misgivings.

I’m the harsh sentence pronounced against

those who would love me most severely.

I came into this world in ruin, my fur

scraped and stretched like the truth.

I can no more adjust to it than the sun

has a right to shine only on the sacred.

Robin Shepard is playing it as it lays. He lives in the bottomlands of central California and knows the best taco trucks in town. He’s the author of Quiet Stars Falling into Quicksand Memory (2017) and The Restoration of Innocence (2023).