Beach Day by Trey Jordan Harris

Shout out to me, who is ready
to die. I drink from containers, I try
to disappear but I only fall
asleep. Old age is a disease,
I'm taking preventative measures
to the extreme. I have never known anyone
who was not too young to die. I'm eliminating
faculties by method. I am the one
cutting new cloth into old patterns.
The trick to genesis is loss
of control. It's too bad I'm pathetic,
we could have a lot of fun. Every day
could be Beach Day. We could approach
the woods in evening heat. Every bug
could be hissing. For twelve easy payments
of blood you could be shut of me.
We could write our wrong decisions
in wet concrete, a list that would end
and this is wrong too, to be smoothed over
in bitter overtime. A light appears on your cheek
or hand—let's put it out, let's switch our hands
for claws, let's replace our blood with machines,
let's go inside, let's sleep in the car, let's do whatever
it takes to rid ourselves of this feeling,
and the next one, and the next.

...

Trey Jordan Harris lives in Rhode Island. Other poems have appeared in Twelfth House, Sixth Finch, Diagram, the Nashville Review, and elsewhere.