Spring 2025 - Vol. 22, Issue 2

on my windowsill, next to the crocheted doilies and dead flowers

there lies a Cold War-era Polish SzM-41M gas mask

with cumbersome misty eyes, gawking like a deep sea fish

flayed rubber scalp and dusty trachea

snaking its valves around the sun-bleached curtain

all that is missing is the lungs;

the E-014 filter cannister, an ugly olive-drab lobe

webbed through with asbestos

has been amputated at my request

the lifeline connects to nothing now

the war is over

the air is safe to breathe

formaldehyde stings the eyes and makes you hungry

my sister tells me, but it keeps you in one piece

long enough for the first-year med students to scoop your brains

string up your vertebrae

and have a quiet giggle that your nail extensions are still on

I’ve been practicing my sutures too

flimsy acrylic thread, around and down, around and down

drawing together the cracks in the perished Soviet rubber

rearing an ugly head

I give it five years, maybe three if I keep it out the sun

before the final, irreversible splitting of seams

visible unmending

burial

what will remain?

glass eyes

steel valves

cheap thread holed into you by other people

migrated silicone

hair extensions

and ghost-spindles, in webs, in walls

hidden, unrotting, like a surgical sponge misplaced under a lung

softly poisoning and mass-produced to save