13
Red Bones
they'd asked me to starve
on a bed of straw
next to the breathing heart
of this legless trapeze woman
like to make a little money, they say
like to make a little fortune
and maybe something
to put away for after you're dead, right?
and this is the first time
I've done it without a net, balancing over
that boiling liquorice tar pit
veins stuffed
with white turkey feathers
and conquer root.
my red blood leaps from my flesh into
a figure with the sharpness of a desert tree
burned black as soot
against
the sky
painted over the moon
and leaping thru their sockets and out the backs
of their skulls , one by one,
heads exploding
screaming
white snot and yellow
pus dripping from their faces
and tears.
I enter into a room with nothing but my backbone
and devil skin, black-Indian-negro swastikas
for nipples
and nails clawing at the eyes of
old Jim Crow and leprosy politicians
the black oil of the earth
the crap guts of my
boiled grandmothers
hanging limbs and dragged
behind carriages
the melted flesh of my uncles
in rusted chains
and nails driven thru their eyes
before their children
driven out of the bellies of
their black Indian mothers,
Scot Irish tides and
North dream wood folklore.
I am the beating brains
of the last nation of genocide
I am the face of ethnic cleansing
I am the last bleeding story teller of the damned
Cherokee moon
and Hell will bring a fire
behind every step
I take.
Justin Wade Thompson is an unemployed German/Scotch-Irish/Melungeon poet living in a trailer park in Austin, Texas. He is married, tattooed, and currently sober. He wrote his first and only novel in the 6th grade, entitled Roach Motel, about a 7 foot tall, man-eating cock roach. Sadly, the only copy of this masterpiece was destroyed, along with his home, in October 1998.
