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    Poetry

    A Victorian Dollhousing Ceremony #7: A Wizard Is Born Outside a Mighty City

    Sunday, December 2, 2018

    By

    Justin Karcher

     

    A Wizard Is Born Outside a Mighty City


    Before my teeth were swampy gemstones, I was but a boy
    begging for scraps on the outskirts of some walled city
    here was the mighty city with its musclemen and gutter nuns
    here was the mighty city with its garbage trucks and concert halls
    the songs the police sing when they beat desert into rain
    what firefighters sing as they shove candles into graves
    here was the mighty city mangling widows with debt and cobblestone
    here was the mighty city shattering windows with bathtub bones
    here were glittering streets lined with hollow cars and wedding cakes
    here were cemeteries disguised as condos where parents went missing
    here was the mighty city disguised as a childless chariot going nowhere
    here was the mighty city with its toilet paper and rooftops pissing
    here were flesh dungeons disguised as preschools crying everywhere
    here was the mighty city that threw out orphans like me, away from fake light
    into the asphalt waste where we chewed on deaf dandelions that never heard our cries
    begging whatever to give us flowers and not weeds, anything but impossible seeds
    we would build giant beds out of animal fur and trampoline guts but never fall asleep
    bouncing up and down toward the snores of stars never awake to give us our dreams
    here was the mighty city that would send out planes dropping lawnmowers and Red Bull
    here were the orphans sticking their fingers into the machinery and praying for wings
    death was everywhere back then, we were cast out like autumn leaves
    cast out when chill burns out the roots, we had no trees that branched us into air
    so we untangled kites from bug hair and dreamed up a wind that looked like home
    searching for the words that could swerve chaos into health, ground without the shakes
    here was the modern age, but all the calendars were fakes and all the clocks secondhand
    so time moved like broken men, sluggish from sunrise to sunset then they dropped like flies
    we were the orphans that turned maggots into magic, scissors to the sky and never look back

     

     

     

    Justin Karcher is a poet and playwright born and raised in Buffalo, New York. He is the author of Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015), the chapbook When Severed Ears Sing You Songs (CWP Collective Press, 2017), the micro-chapbook Just Because You've Been Hospitalized for Depression Doesn't Mean You're Kanye West (Ghost City Press, 2017), Those Who Favor Fire, Those Who Pray to Fire (EMP, 2018) with Ben Brindise, and Bernie Sanders Broke My Heart and I Turned into an Iceberg (Ghost City Press, 2018). He is also the editor of Ghost City Review and co-editor of the anthology My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry(BlazeVOX [books], 2017). He tweets @Justin_Karcher.

     

     

     

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