The Last Time You Caught Me Staring by Seth Berg

Mortar, the kind belonging to bricks,

and a luncheon:

duck pate and sorbet,

an ace for every sleeve.

Can you hear the helicopter,

the overhead throat-sound

of blades spinning, someone

In dark glasses holding it still, buoyant?

You play it like a piano

on your kneecap,

tiny digits hop-scotching

across your remarkable skirt.

You should see your face right now:

this delicate marker,

the nest into which I curl,

the everything etched into my bones.

Seth Berg is a chainsaw-wielding wild man who digs tasty hallucinatory literature. His first book, Muted Lines From Someone Else's Memory was winner of Dark Sky Books 2009 book contest. Other poems and short fiction can be found in JMWW, Connecticut Review, 13th Warrior Review, Spittoon Literary Review, BlazeVOX, Heavy Feather Literary Review, and Lake Effect, among others. Most recently, poems were anthologized in GTCPR Volume III and Daddy Cool. Berg is addicted to hot sauce and psychedelia. He lives in Minnesota with his two supernatural children, Oak and Sage, as well as his guardian snow leopard. He loves your face.

Street art by Konstantin Bokov.
Photo by Adam Lawrence.

"The Curse" comes from the 2013 album from Agnes Obel, Aventine, released by Play It Again Sam in October 2013.