BRENNEN WYSONG
THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
I was beginning to fall in love with a dashing
young drone pilot, my heart a soft target gushing,
when you told me I’d finally made your watch
list. Was it the rash from my smallpox you
took as blushing? The pinch of gunpowder I
applied behind my ears? My religiously mandated
beard of bees? Kevlar nosegays carry no odor,
so I never respected my arranged marriage
to a burlap sack full of scorpions. Yes, we gave
birth to hyenas with double pneumonia. And
yes, it was our double pneumonia that gave birth
to the pack. And yes, and yes, and yes, I came
in colors everywhere with my betrothed. So call
me coy then: I’ve been hiding here this whole
time behind my ballistic face mask and a
two-piece robot bikini equipped for bomb
diffusion. Still, I want a romantic scavenger hunt,
a midnight search for four moths tethered just
beyond a candle flame, seven tiny silver claws
skittering, a wobbly serenade played on a handsaw,
a sick rose. I want to swoon beneath the tyranny
of the camera’s eye. But you are sick. And all your
surveillance leaves me feeling nearly naked. Perhaps
I’ll throw up a fog of germ warfare and slip
seductively through it, wondering all the while: If it’s
hard to know who the enemy is, isn’t it equally
difficult to know who to love? My body will bloom
as bullets exit my flesh. There’s a singing inside me.