What Rough Beast | 08 30 20 | Zack Hoffman

Zack Hoffman
On Your Left

there is an indentation
on the left side cushion
beige couch ass print
and a target on my back
stay home or die old man

40 inches of Samsung with a sound bar
pictures and voices filling me so I don’t listen to myself
watch nothing and everything bouncing from the screen
Steven King says, “You have to give up the glass tit”
but it’s the only tit I’ve got
alone consulting depression

a chained-up basement bicycle
becomes a reclamation project
recycles me
moves me outside
where children chalk the streets
trees filter oxygen while dogs bark
wind blows the target off my back
an hour of redemption

—Submitted on 08/25/2020

Zack Hoffman lives in Seattle. His poetry has appeared in the Licton Springs Review, the art and literary journal of North Seattle College.

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