#damon mclaughlin

[damonmclaughlin]

[literaryhousepress]

Let's start with these coyotes / caterwauling the moon's a'gonna fall

from "Grievance," by Damon McLaughlin in Cherry Tree, Issue 3 🐺🌕

[calllunavulgaris]

I remember lifting a sparrow into the air, and he rose like a ball bouncing off this table. I expected him to float awhile, but he fell, little bird, like a rose opening its petals. No one lives forever. I did it, and that's why, each pebble dropped down his beak like a coin into a wishing well. Starving he was, and I was goodness and purity. Do you know how it feels to palm a body like a poem, its mouth opening and closing, wings burdened by their own new weight-- Close your eyes, little bird. You don't know the things you're about to do.

Damon McLaughlin

[hush-syrup]

We thought we were angels. We were so white and so cold.

From Rehab by Damon McLaughlin

[thecryingbench]

The summer we tried to kill ourselves it was humid. The summer the floods came. We ran headfirst into the water, and when that didn’t work we swam casually into the middle of the river and it took us over the dam like bits of trees it had busted but couldn’t sink. Always to the side we floated, pieces of the flood bubbling up as we choked and shivered, kicking the silence off the porch at night. Like retired ghosts passing through the dark we walked naked around the block in the rain. We thought we were angels. We were so white and so cold.

              - Damon McLaughlin, Rehab 

[motherground]

Rehab

The summer we tried to kill ourselves it was humid. The summer the floods came. We ran headfirst into the water, and when that didn't work we swam casually into the middle of the river and it took us over the dam like bits of trees it had busted but couldn't sink. Always to the side we floated, pieces of the flood bubbling up as we choked and shivered, kicking the silence off the porch at night. Like retired ghosts passing through the dark we walked naked around the block in the rain. We thought we were angels. We were so white and so cold.

-- damon mclaughlin

[smilinghooks]

Rehab

The summer we tried to kill ourselves it was humid.

The summer the floods came.

We ran headfirst into the water, and when that didn't work

we swam casually into the middle of the river and it took us

over the dam like bits of trees it had busted but couldn't sink.

Always to the side we floated, pieces of the flood

bubbling up as we choked and shivered, kicking the silence

off the porch at night. Like retired ghosts passing through the dark

we walked naked around the block in the rain.

We thought we were angels. We were so white and so cold.

- Damon McLaughlin