Poet Joshua Clover and 11 Students May Face Prison Time

Scar Tissue in a Cosmic Holding Pattern
by shawn misener

My state of being is only loosely held together
with thin pearly lines of something like hope
something I used to call optimism
before God hit me over the head with his floppy dick

My aortic valve and sigmoid colon came up missing
when I woke up in the slushy claw-footed tub
that is my waking life
___

She’s splayed out over an ocean of Tupperware

I can’t hear a word she’s saying
because the goddamn dishwasher sounds like a freight train

I assume she thinks sometimes about beating the shit out of me
and I have often thought that marriage is the greatest irony of all

I’m attached to her like scar tissue
and therefore I ask her where the green mustard is

she just shrugs
again