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Ian Hall: Bellyache

June 7, 2020 by PBQ Leave a Comment

Bless this queasy life oh lord

the palsy of a well-pump

you can’t wash the slop off under

the chapped spigot.

This outhouse

where I’m holed up

with the drizzling shits—

my stomach in enough knots

to earn a medal—the swollen room

of my rectum rented out

to these scum pipes

clogged with cess

Drain-O like a colonic

that will leave you

longing for the dry

gushings to slacken

in the cemetery of your guts

the small intestine a tombstone

with the liquor’s sob-story scrawled in fat

on the liver like a eulogy. The gallbladder

a potter’s field where the greening bile

officiates in conditions of constant

flux. Rigor Mortis in the urethra

my piss shy as a monthling I do

simple addition and lickspittle sums

to coax it out like the creek

after a flood dragonflies and dung beetles

witness the mark no more

than a knife’s girth that a moth

makes hush on my lips shut

my mouth like gauze spooled taut like a butterfly

bandage. There’s this tow truck hauling

hard freight down the jammed highway

of my hind end double time I’m doubled up

and over again skull between knees

like I’m molting like I might stiffen

into the Sabbath the seventh day

of this godawful virus. Through woodpecker-chinks

in the wall the moon pranks me

with its spotlight on these splinters

like little mealworms rooting in the white flour

of my thighs. Beneath all this squelch

a leach-bed teething on loam

so rich it’s gouted. What to blame

for this bloodletting this hot soda

fizzling out of my ass? Must have been the cured

meat we dolled up for supper

with all the trimmings

a week lapsed the grease

on our lips like a whole bout

of leftovers. With single-ply

pages from the Sears & Roebuck catalogue

daubed like shrapnel in my rear

I waddle outside. My father

and I meet in opposite directions

on the homeward path

worried to an interstate

of packed dirt. We pass without words

just hands folded in prayer on our paunches

pregnant with regret.

Filed Under: Issue 100, Poetry 100 Tagged With: Ian Hall

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