Two Poems from “Impersonal Rainbow & The Bisexual Purge”

Paul Killebrew | Impersonal Rainbow & The Bisexual Purge | Canarium Books | October 2023 | 176 Pages


Canted Circles

I ate pleasantries
and wasted a whole house
on miniature catastrophes,
my one, two, three
apologies to sleep,
may we reunite
behind the flower
that greets the desperation
I sit with in the rain
legislating a personhood
more wanted than me,
the small font
of a dog’s voice
hnnn hnnn hnnn
by the ladder to a treehouse
darkened by clouds
digesting thunder
scrolling through streets
like a prosecutor
looking for someone to humiliate.

Abandonment and Animation

You make up
the better part
of an expression
that shuffles across
the face of
this perennial bath
in I-wonder-what-
I-did-to-my-god-
to-deserve-this-
infusion-of
suffering-within-
such-inconsequential-
delivery-systems-
as-being-looked-atness.

From Impersonal Rainbow & The Bisexual Purge by Paul Killebrew. 
Copyright © 2023 Paul Killebrew. 
Reprinted with permission of Canarium Books.

Paul Killebrew

Paul Killebrew was born in 1978 in Nashville, Tennessee. His other books are Flowers, Ethical Consciousness, and To Literally You, all published by Canarium Books. He lives in Maryland.

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