“Viole(n)t”
When a star explodes, we say violent. About the exploding, not the falling in that has to come first – the lashing out but not what happens to the inner child made to hold everything in.
I freely admit there would be no us without the bursting of skin, the shock waves,
the
expulsion of seed, the utterly nonconsensual drama of the phoenix – like we’re
joined to
violent whether we like it or not.
But color me skeptical. Talk to me first about bones. Talk to me about hard hot
breath on the skin, words like crazy and all in the past and angry symphonies,
ragged wounds, crack of the whip, the tongue, the roadside bomb.
I was just clumsy and fell
says the purple blotch about the eye that was once a sun
***
Michael Getty is a writer who lives with his husband on occupied Indigenous land in what some call St. Paul, Minnesota. His work has appeared in publications such as Typishly Literary Journal, Pidgeonhole(s), and The Gateway Review.