a machine was your shadow

the machine couldn’t sing
so it taught flowers to unfurl
from the magazines.

you learned in school how it carried
black nails and little black wishes
in the wind of its eye.

sometimes you would stoop
to watch the machine
shuffle off dawn with a broom.

that year, a secret hurt
soured
(as all hurt does)

between you
and the bullying
wills of the other children.

beaten one day,
you looked up to see
a reel of bats

beamed
onto a drive-in screen.
at the time, you had no organs.

so you got up
and went out for milk.
an unhappy clinking

begged like hunger
from the garage.
but this was nothing new–

the machine, its indian-style,
sheet music
spewing out its mouth.

a ritual you began
to understand
like oxygen,

necessary and utterly
inconsequential.
come the windows of morning,

you dwelt with wishes
in the milky eye
of the machine–

would have given anything
to never go back
to the schoolyard.

but, secretly, you were lost
yourself in its
arrogant and terrible music.

so, you chased the machine around,
pulled its tail,
called it names

as it drowned you
with its cries
till you couldn’t believe yourself.

till you curled up
beside it at night,
and made love

to a sound like washing.
and still, it loved
you, in spite of you.

 – Kyle McCord

The Collapse (or An Excerpt From The Postwar Sessions)

You could call the kitchen of my house a resting place. Most people called what happened an accident, but my instinct was to place blame on someone or something. I tried to place it on all of them individually at one point or another—my mother, sisters and brothers. But in relating this chain of events, someone will always invariably ask, “Where was your father in all of this?” In the later years of my time at home he was the least powerful of anyone in the household; why anyone assumes his presence was so important will always perplex me. My reply to the question changes every so often: he was away on business, he was dead, or incapacitated, or treasure hunting.