#anthony conover

[getyourcrownswhiletheyrehot]

death is on my mind in the hills, bare. the vultures or buzzards or hawks, the mangy, winged, and malnourished, forging a halo between us and the sun.

A

[getyourcrownswhiletheyrehot]

she's washing dishes and water has never been so violent. she hunches and the scowl cut from porcelain sears through the back of her hair, the throat is getting tight. you might have brought this on.

A

[getyourcrownswhiletheyrehot]

now why would you offer anything to a winded heart? only disaster comes from humoring the desperate because the desperate are too parched to recognize desire. with sights set on consumption, reverence and limitation are rarely present company. soiled chin and glazed eyes drunk on rich profusion, the exasperated heart seeks only to gorge on any offering. reverence, reciprocity, and limitation are scarce company to their inner workings.

A

[getyourcrownswhiletheyrehot]

the dogs are sniffing at my dress, reds and tearing, moon and circle webs in frayed branches. I can smell mountain misery ride wide through the room on a mouth temperature current through the window. red and tearing. clavicles caving, the dogs are sniffing. the sweat on my back is turning cotton to lazy flesh heavy and wrinkling, chaffing. they're sniffing. and red and tearing. he keeps a wood fire burning every night, even under the dead of july, he likes the smell. likes how it sits on the tongue and flavors his diction. clavicles caving. the dogs are sniffing. red and tearing and the arrow gripped, and the blade sinking, the hammer cocked, the matchbook pursed. he releases them. he shakes the violence loose from the skyline and shows me how we all bleed the same. red and tearing. red and tearing. red and tear in the bed we share. in the bed we're sharing.

A

[getyourcrownswhiletheyrehot]

soggy infamy is the watermark of seasoned queendhood. smile lines filled with beauty paste and eyebrows well-trained--- she's both ship and captain plowing through a sea of flesh. metallic flecks fall like winter from day-glo skies bundled in fishnet, faux feathers like a second skin.

A

[getyourcrownswhiletheyrehot]

paperthin. by month two it was more like a pet name shared between us and the palaces we constructed, hands over third and fourth eyes. but we still held our breaths in tunnels and hoarded wishbones for rainier days neck-deep in monsoons. we were a lot of metaphors for a lot of faulty inventions. the type of craft that only has one take-off, never lands unscattered; the feathers of icarus stapled to an anonymous wing.

A

[getyourcrownswhiletheyrehot]

I'm a stranger to what it means to be in a moment. too busy strung out on connotations, expertly grabbing at any name for what it means when you lean into me. the weightlessness of your acknowledgement spun tight with the pounding fear rising to the back of my throat as your name sits heavier and heavier like a black a eye on the face of my weeks. foolish, I revel in this hunger.

A

[getyourcrownswhiletheyrehot]

operatic orgasms, orchards folding, sun and moon parallel in their scowls, clouds under every step, fire and black horses, skeletal over cliffs, a million hands stopped cold on clock faces shattered. but silence. blinding and diamond hard silence, walls, heavens high-- we're in a fucking moment. skull fragments crack into a crown and I'm rising to claim what's mine. the night's just a child and I can call two kingdoms mine by midnight. and don't think I won't be fine. because I will. don't premeditate a crash because I know to coat myself to clean with the whites of their eyes. bringing you the best milk and freshest honey you've ever bathed in. ivory and onyx and emerald. whole evades remembered in mother of pearl, wings strong with luxury. the moment's almost done, go home and wait.

A