The NPR Podcast I put on Makes Me Feel like I’m Treating Myself like a Dog, Putting on a TV so it Feels like Someone’s Home, and That’s Kind of Okay ‘Cause I’m a Good Boy and Who Wants to Go for a Walk?

I.

We’re the mountain and the path. You[ ]paint/under/your fingernails.

I didn’t know it worked like that.

I hold my breath in the shower and pretend. You[ ]dirt/under/your fingernails.

I left what you said on the mountain, on the path.

We[’]re/under/the fingernails, the dirt.

 

I race to the boarded door.

Your back covered in tatami.

{Read with an ache}: I reap like power lines over the mountain.

Finding the dirt, the path, our fingernails.

 

II.

T. showed up with white hair. We’re on the 22 back/again/I clip the windows in place. That car in reverse, eating asphalt. I watch your skin turn to carpet and try to think like C.

I wipe the paint off into scrambled eggs. I act like cleaning supplies.

I tell my friends the truth, a change. I almost make it.

I work up to flipping the album. I track bugs by painting my walls. I use a microscope.

 

III.

This is an empty box.

You’re stapling the wall full of lighters. My mind’s not right.

You say: [][][] – you remember/above/a shade of streetlamp not quite yellow.

My mind turns left. We have good diets and bad habits.

 

I cover myself with

paint to keep heat away.

 

Do you remember

the layers we were?

 

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Josh Anthony is a boy, man. They currently live in the shadow of Mt. Fuji. Their work has been featured in S/tick, Gone Lawn, Meat for Tea, Slipstream and Fish Food Magazine, among others. Their email is [email protected].