Keith Higginbotham


Hammerhead

Sweat claustrophobia of
overhauled moonscape my sacred
tigers up in anthems; fur gas back
strap stomps you in the jumbo
cheers before stance
of garish sideburns
and lullabies wayward underwater
in bleachers the great song
language; supermodels swamp
the promontory.

Beneath my lonely skin cold
regulations unbridled
tarred golden solemn reeling
testimonials. Cold boys
solitary melted me here
I dive hammerhead.
Domain of stupid demonic
goodbye sea me
streetwalking cadaverous;

on back black overshirt enemies
feathered and softly
progress in fur and dome.
Beauties relic and warring
then flows you,
killing the skin
of silence beneath
and puts out all the bloodbath.



Blows the Trope

scope disunity eternal
united but
enter the crest

crest sunk harmonize
blinds inland out
damned commands

waving down
terrifying brief
houseflies taught

bed swale wake
signal sum metaphor
blue sex storm can

so blows allegiance
up my organs
the unmade opposite

inventing the sky
time his field is my
mud of yesterday

dirty them in song
archer smoke spare tassel
remembering arms

return to handle the
spectacle waste but first
everything airplanes bodies

playing garments
the empirical
bind growing either out

mud his means from
the screaming forgotten
summer of window

has that shooting terrain
blinds skin his
image just a dying picture

sunk feet blows the
trope fellow swells
a river wake

of mistakes as in
sea handle heat
burst of wig

cold return ends bodies
wild sun the song
of air organs

dirty for what



Hello I Must Be Going

Thinking astride the paradise that
platforms in the 18th century: the depths
of dismal afternoons unwashed
in unwavering parlance. My reaction
is a bastard of leaves reading
the moderns. The drowsy language
crucifies itself in my head,
the emperor’s subway dissolves,
noise of the glass-chambered
skin slips in. The motion of byways.
The motion of pagan labor.
Drawers of history wear over all
gesturing. Threadlike western genres
slice the message.



Porkpie

His embrued hands;
Great big saint which things
                                              Salvation in;
                                              (with sinn’d and
                                              crown’d
                                              and bestrewed)
Land salvation.
A hand grave found?
                                              (doth mind
                                              a grave.)


Still lukewarm his brethren
Referenced dissembling thou his strife
                                              (and not by word cast;
Gates of Holiness words
I crave);
Referenced his praying excess
                                              Of terrors.

Thus all civil country saints
                                              (whose crimes wind
                                              England’s twin)
Beware the great blemish flaming
Upon the wheel undone.




Keith Higginbotham's publications include Grace Notes (illustrator) (Unknown Press), Calibration (Argotist eBooks), Theme From Next Date (Ten Pages Press), Prosaic Suburban Commercial (E∙ratio Editions), and Carrying the Air on a Stick (The Runaway Spoon Press). He lives in South Carolina.
 
 
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