Arson Watch
By the time the last bitten
lip flame licks a rotted
portico he’ll phantom slide
toward the green barrel.
Forgive the skipped wrist
its numerous trespasses.
Forgive the forgotten note
he meant to send yet kept
tucked in the pocket of his
worn coat. The blazing orange
is an unusual, sick passion.
He feels skin tighten, breath
quicken. Heat beads wet his
upper lip, inside his legs, arm-
pits. Black charcoal cicatrix
reveals who he thinks he is.
A Cell the Shape of a Ring
does not really exist, I think.
Each one with four tight corners
stuck fast with dust. Dirt rot yellow,
spider skeleton bone still under
fluorescent. Opens into an oval
when you’re alone, walking in slow
circles. There is a way rats feel,
chewing aluminum foil, running
over a water-wheel. Garbage night
sits heavy, never dark enough for deep
sleep. Touch your ring now. Imagine
moving around it for hours. The bag
over your face goes in and out until
the brown paper gets stuck in your mouth.
The Castle
Caught unawares by a heavy
truncheon from behind, I woke
sweat-bloody in an open ditch
& thought about a cockroach
I kept as a pet in a little glass
jar. It would scratch wanting
free air & I’d open the top
to let it roam. I fed it slivers
of rotting apple. I really
thought this place would be
different. Large structure
in the distance casts shadows
over all, touching each corner.
The walls, people here say,
are sharp to the touch & the closer
you appear to get, the farther
the structure grows. Trees don’t
really sway so much as vibrate
in scared silence through the crisp
air. I let my roach go, back there
in another life. Its body ambled
over the floor as though carrying
& running from a heavy burden.
I better get up; the notes I wrote
lay scattered in the mud. Night
falls & the longer my body
stays still, the more it feels
permanently fixed—suspended
—between my own walls
of blood & grass & the shadow
hovering over my shape.
Charles Kell is a PhD student at The University of Rhode Island and editor of The Ocean State Review. His poetry and fiction have appeared in The New Orleans Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, IthacaLit, and elsewhere. He teaches in Rhode Island and Connecticut.