Asking My Liver For Forgiveness
by Rob Cook

2014

I dragged my body to the end of my street
and there was no new year.

I watched the cinder blocks
growing legs and fur.
They had no place to sleep
or stay warm. And no,
they were not cats.

I saw a diseased liver on the sidewalk.
Nothing stopped to sniff
or taste it. But it smelled
like a pouch of rancid diamonds.

In one house a phone vibrated
until it fell to the floor.

In another the children were forcing
shoes to eat each other.
Or maybe one child was simply
chewing his lips.

The houses—and no one knew
who left them there—were dark
and absorbed none of the afternoon light.

And on the smallest known world—
two men—father and son—waited
to hear the name of the thing
plundering their insides.

I thought I heard a flock of geese—
I turned around, twice,
but it was just a radio chirping
inside a car parked at the wrong
wind coordinate,

and above us, by a storm deviation or less,
one uninterrupted cloud mass
like the lid of a garbage can
cemented to the sky where nothing moved.

I lured my body to the end of my street
but it was a lie all along—
there was no new year.