A List of His Flaws

By PETER MISHLER

Single-headed.

Flowering inwardly.

Barely felt in the birth canal.

Medical marketer.

Sick with planet.

Cupped like a handful of sea uncertainly held.

Carried fire to the human encampment.

Herod in boyhood.

An herbicide.

Given name known to the weapons inspectors.

Anchorite.

All alane.

Drowned his horse at the edge of the pier.

Covered in silverfish.

Drank Sutter Home.

Wept but briefly through the grate of mesh.

Fist full of clip-art.

Asked why the mask sweat.

Ancestry swabs in his cheeks like two tusks.

Mouth like a storm drain.

Flashdrive of redheads.

Nudity a vestige from the vault in which he hid.

Did not provide succor, a perch, or a crawlspace.

Became the mother reborn in the son.

Territory manager.

Sloppy kisser.

Face concealer.

Eaten-up thumbs.

Shit-shoveler.

Inner-Caesar.

Underwhelming shield.

Endymion.

 

[Purchase Issue 19 here.] 

Peter Mishler‘s debut collection is Fludde. Other new work appears this year in Granta and The American Poetry Review.

A List of His Flaws

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