The Wind Cannot Remove the Stench from my Bones

Poems TJ LyonsArt & Design Andrew Jurado

I Think I Sleep in a Peel That Fits Me Better Than a Collar

We’re all lone bananas when the lighting’s right I’m showing you how to simplify your wardrobe I’ll join you at the shore of a cereal bowl where we’ll slice our selves over cheerios You’ll dive ten times before understanding that life is finding the right bowl to put your shit in It’s a matter of clothing Watch me put on this coat I’m a single dudelonging to be a simple banana lost in green sleep We soften in our peels I’m just a man face etched onto mush

Wind

You already knowI exist through jointsalone—my body’s a city of knees never extending

past me where buildingswear party hats. This is not my stomachthis balloon of shitI’ll never keep.

I’m a piñata. Pin-yaa-ta. Man in the tree. Hanging by my knees. Man-yaa-ta. Cram the sugar & bash me in. Today’s your new birthday.

I’ll Join You in the Graveyard if I Can Do My Banking There

The future isn’t cancelled, right? Long as I keep dipping my face toward the dirt I know I have purpose. Living like a light bulb at the mercy of a twist. Lets tattoo ourselves with a tree branch till we’re a mural of leaves injected with bark and mystery. Living as a bug under a pivoting boot. Deposit some bones for safekeeping. Call it a long-term investment: long-term digestion. As long as you agree, I’ll keep folding these leaves inside my wallet, keep hurling myself into the ground like my life is bent on it—or I’m trying to meet some measurement.

Since Birth

I sleep on a bed made of dogs I know nothing different Every night I wrap myself in Pit bull quilts stitched with Golden Retriever earsI rest my face on Dalmatian pillow cases stuffed with one hundred Chihuahuas The paws of a Husky pack hold up my bed Their mattress backs mold to my tender infancy Before all this I rented a decent two bedroom uptown in a womb made of Poodles My bed taught me how to play dead when it really matters

We are Plummet

Books have made us bankrupt.I’m 25 and have floaters in both eyes.

A stream retreats to its source: the fish swims into a bigger mouth.

I have too many eyes to choose what I see. I stare at my computer

screen and never look at my bank statements. There are seven lemons

on the counter. Never a climber of birch wood but at times a stowaway

in a cold hole. Come on, always go in the attic when the music says you

shouldn’t. I want to live in the earth. Home-mire. Please make me cringe.

I admire the dirty pool then bathe in it. The truth will set you on fire.

Answers are in the attic hidingin boxes you haven’t opened.

You’re an astronaut and I’m the opposite.No matter what I eat my stomach

is in revolt. My breath smells likebirth. It makes me feel like my spine

was ripped out to whip me into a skin puddle. We got married in a drive

through chapel that also changedour oil. What a steal.

When we locked ourselves in the shed and feasted on the tree’s fruit: I hid you

the skin from that day to make a quilt.The cold truth always follows me home.

I like to think I’m the king of sleep and stand in front

of my open refrigerator dressed in full snow gear

imagining how I’ll squeeze inside,

you stuffing me in.

Thank you to the following journals where these poems first appeared:

HTMLGIANT, “I Sleep in a Peel That Fits Me Better Than a Collar”Plain Wrap Press, “Wind”Word Riot, “I’ll Join You in the Graveyard if I Can Do My Banking There”The Coachella Review, “Since Birth”Up Literature, “We are Plummet”

Acknowledgments

TJ Lyons is a dude. He lives in California where the people are chill, and at the same time not very chill.

Andrew Jurado, using a pencil, ink and water color, brought forth that which you have witnessed.

The Wind Cannot Remove the Stench from my Bones