gruesome glories

Merci Lyons-Cox

Merci Lyons-Cox reads "gruesome glories"


mike used to live under the boardwalk slugging schlitz

and hits of acid burying winston butts in the sand before

cruising the boards for familiar silhouettes and some food or cruising the

broads too cute in bikinis it was the seventies

and everything was sunshine cool man keep on truckin

and anyway fuck earl and his pussy kids moving in

and fuck fran for letting earl beat on her boys

like he did she never did really want

to be a mom in the first place so

she was free of mike at least and mike

was free in a way most people will never be

reclined in a naked nighttime float the beach

is so dark at night and the ocean is a portal to a holy

perpetuity an acceptance of whatever everything nothing

who cares how can he care when he can feel nothing

but the everything of himself a fleck on the continental shelf

at the mercy of this great mother and all of her gruesome glories made

sharpened and spineless and shaped to survive one time

lane in a state of evaporation asked mike what the best feeling in the

world was and lane laughed when his brother said relief but mike said

relief is equal to the pain which precedes it when we need it

we will beg to a god we may not even believe in and if we receive it

we are made whole once more by the grace of its deliverance

 
 

Merci Lyons-Cox is a Philadelphia-based poet, performer, and longtime service industry worker. She has a BA in theater and recently received her MFA in poetry, both from Temple University. Merci has one published poem, courtesy of The Garlic Press, called ‘on working’.

 
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