Our dreams of clear skies & grass-
stained knees, of dandelions gathered
in piles on knolls in the pasture,
sank in the mud. Our pleasure of
decadent chocolate sex, of piss-sour
fuck, died in the summer streets, rotting
with the discarded banana peels & tamarind.
When we woke our world shook with
yawns, with wine-tainted breath, with cum-
splattered genitals & the wadded condom—
S-shaped like a noodle or the stray strand
of brown hair on the pillow this morning.
Justin often finds himself in busy restaurants picking at gum underneath tables. As a second grader, he would smear Elmer’s glue beneath his desktop & peel it off after it dried. His glue-picking held him back in school & also his career as a bystander. Now, as an under-employed, gum-picking bystander, Justin finds time to create whimsical fictions & pompous poetry that have turned up in Apocrypha & Abstractions, Lummox Press, & various internet sites that have since disappeared into obscurity. He is a Tennessee native raised in the Southern Gothic tradition but has abandoned the cotton fields for the paved streets of Chicago. He also reads for Literary Orphans.
–Art by Peter Lamata