IN DEATH PRINT

I forget how to hold my own penis,
and horrify everyone with my pleas.

The libraries hold only instructions
for devices that killed children.

The tables sag with food and the cups
brim with the grinnings of rats.

My shoes fit, but my pants drag,
my arms dangling from my sleeves.

Plenty of wires, bricks, nails, wood
plenty plenty plenty.

We spread on the frosted
grass of the park, and we trade.

I find I like your life better.
Your achievements comfort me.

I laugh as I could not laugh
because my laughter is dead laughter.

I pause, gather myself, and I
pause, gathering, to pause.

Patrick Scott Vickers is a technologist and instructor for Virginia Commonwealth University’s English Department and a PhD student in the Media, Art, and Text program. He graduated in 2006 with an MFA in poetry from the University of Alabama. His stories and poems have appeared in Strange Horizons, Mid-American Review, and Touchstone. Most recently, his Flash art has appeared in the online journal failbetter.