If I were a pet you owned
would you check all the line breaks to find me
once the sun fell into its bleak
trashcan and the sloppy
night forged through
your mind to find a surface.
Questions ask themselves. I do not become super
until after dusk, and then the calamity
pours out of me like sewage. Maybe someday
you and I can
drop the kids off at school and go
for a heartbreaking swim
this side of Death
and that side of this little novella that we pen
in the darkness of becoming our silhouettes.
Josh Bettinger is a poet and editor. He is the author of the chapbook A Dynamic Range Of Various Designs For Quiet (2019), from GASHER. Recent publications include Salt Hill Journal, Handsome Poetry, SLICE, flock, Columbia Journal, Atlas Review, Crazyhorse, and Boston Review, among others. He lives in Northern California with his wife and kids.