Heath Brougher

Splintered Hands

Drilling
  rilling 
             
               ril

     rilly

[epoch chopra]     hired heaters
high-
                           wire
                                      gun.

Summ-
on    [om]

                 taste-
                             less candlewax.


We attend Maya’s phony funeral.


  Wicky. 
       Woken.
            Wombat.
                   Wonderen.
                          Wields a
                                   Wicked Wand
 and out spills the extraneous carcass of Wavering Wood.
                                                 Wattage! What age? What is?


Ickly.
   A human’s palm
        cannot have
          a                 spike 
                            driven—drilled!—through it
with 
          out 
splintering into pieces.

   Burst.
       Bloof.
            Bliff. 
                Bleat.
                      Beat. 
              Be lungs!     I have rectified 
my many church fires.

     Scary little girls with pillowcases full of toasters
       Mix
         Match
            Marital Arts.
                  Machinery everywhere.
                       Myriad Moms.
                            Monotonous Morons.


Lists
of 
dangerous 
dopamine 
divers
     could never drive a nail through a palm successfully.

I am ragg-
ed

     disease.

Both bend and don’t bend the spoon with your brain.

        I am om! and I am also not om!



Bell Pepper Skin

Hypothetical syringe
mop deep     →
in utero en eviscerated viscera  ,,  ,,     →
wobbly down  ;;
typotatoes = toma toes
dingle jingle d(angle)rowning jungles  ;;

pet the black hole  ;;  r(ub)efresh its ear(lobe)s ;;

nearing asparagus freshcut as (aspara)g(r)as(s)     →
slices  |  (en)visioned  |  revivened  | gutted
on a plate  :  sqish rutabat or ugula  ;;

pop a cop     →
movie theatre blood
gushing from
out each film
bleedingout staightout
into the sl-I-ppe-ry rub-I-cund lobby  ;;.



Vending Machine Vaccinations 

Heed all n(eedle)uclear w(ithered)eather
crisp huddle  ,, 
                   hoist  ,,
                     joist = jostle arthr-I-tic  ,,
h(h)olding h(h)ands
while h(h)umanity h(h)ums  ,,  sounding off  ,,
                             unvagueing 
                             h(h)ues 
                             of atomic plumage ;;.



Of On 

Maelstrom rostrum male-strum  ,,
in-bellyfulla butterwalls  ,,
shot outta canyon of You-Cans  ,,
a Tuscan toucan tropical sunscream ban  ,,
embroidered axioms 
slink through th(R)ick  ,,
vor(whorl)tex sketching pristine piñatas 
ov ovum ovenhum over(head)heard om  ;;.



Q & A 

Question: What are human beings?


Answer: Wrong.

Heath Brougher is the editor- in-chief of Concrete Mist Press as well as poetry editor for Into the Void, winner the 2017 and 2018 Saboteur Award for Best Magazine. He is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and received the Taj Mahal Review's 2018 Poet of the Year Award. His most recent collections are Bleeding Backwards (Diaphanous Micro, 2019) and Change Your Mind (Alien Buddha Press, 2019). His work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Word For Word, Zoomoozophone Review, MiPOesias, Poetry Pacific, former People, Big Bridge, Angry Old Man, Lummox, Outlaw Poetry, Down in the Dirt, BlazeVOX, and elsewhere.
 
 
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