Homecoming
by Damon McLaughlin


As I walk in the closed cavity
of myself, glancing up
the alley behind Jigs--, the one tavern,
the True Value store, the feed lot,
the grunts amid the heaps,
the flies.

Nothing's changed. Maggots
flies flies maggots, angels
descend upon the living and the dead.
What I've found here, what calls me here
is a winged, terrible thing, its red mouth
sucking me in secret. With a lift of my foot

I am gone, deep in the war
as if in prayer.






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