SurVision Magazine

Blacktop


Lips on skin bedecked
with ink. Planned out
and etched, built around
the different contours
of our bodies. Man, woman,
the number line graded
between the two. How
a fragment of map
on an inner thigh can be
back alleys in Riga
for one person, Pennsylvania
Avenue for another, but all
is territory. It is only
those who cannot find a way
to share who feel the need
to draw lines in the dirt
with blood, with skin,
who feel a need for wings
to crest their own walls.
Bricks and mortar can
as certain build a gate,
let the good paved road
continue, as a barrier.
We each have two hands to hold,
ten fingers to kiss.






Hoodoo Man


Business suits sit
at accountants' desks
absent their owners.
Assembly lines shut down,
the robots on strike
for all-synthetic oil
and muzak changed
to the work of Jeremy Soule.
The final cigarette company
has gone out of business.
Last survivors of the plague
cower in their homes,
assume the census taker
infected, act accordingly.





Robert Beveridge makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry just outside Cleveland, Ohio. Recent and upcoming appearances in Pink Litter, The Ignatian, and YuGen, among others.