Featuring the Words & Photography of Rob Plath

on repeat 

you finally get home 

in the dark 

52nd birthday 

alone

after yr car madly shook 

b/c of ice stuck in the tires 

from the blizzard 

yr 3 lbs of grey mush 

rattling in yr skull 

as you ran errands 

you pass beneath icicles 

hanging from 

the lopsided awning 

like long fangs 

outside the door 

to yr little place 

but yr not worried 

about teeth 

yr made out 

of bite wounds 

standing in the kitchen 

you see a litter of bugs 

in the globe 

of the light above 

a bright crystal ball 

of burnt corpses 

the future isn’t propaganda 

the future is a litter of insects 

feasting on what’s left of you 

bite marks & all 

the sky tonight 

is fangs & corpses 

yr not hungry 

yr not thirsty 

yr not anything 

you just sit quietly 

cold elbows upon 

the rickety 

secondhand table 

in a questionable 

wooden chair 

on the verge 

of collapse 

listening to death 

over there 

in the blue corner 

scraping its blade 

over a dark stone 

the song nobody 

wants to hear

the tune that’s 

on repeat in yr head 

24/7

boy mummy 

in 4th grade i was obsessed w/ egyptian mummies 

i’d get books on them when the teacher gave me a pass to the school library 

i loved reading about them & stared at the photographs for hours 

they seemed so untouchable, preserved for thousands of years 

i kept renewing the small stack of books 

studying about mummies took my mind off bullies of the school halls too 

sometimes i imagined the boy mummies from the books opening their eyes & being my friends 

i often daydreamed about the mysterious tales 

& how if you disturbed a mummy there was a terrible curse cast on the intruder 

that year, i pretended i was a boy mummy 

alive & moving thru halls, skinny & stiff & petrified as usual

my shape wrapped in layers of protective bandages

just my eyes visible 

& even tho occasionally the red from a fat lip or a nose bleed seeped thru my gauze 

it helped to imagine the unlucky bullies of the school halls being hellishly hexed

cold mashed potatoes 

standing in the kitchen 

eating cold mashed potatoes 

out of the pot 

1:26 pm 

tuesday 

of 

the longest month 

you laugh as the worms 

calling yr name 

outnumber the people 

calling yr name 

& the future isn’t so much 

as bright 

as it is glistening 

in segments 

wiggling yr way 

& as you spoon another heap 

of cold mashed potatoes 

into yr skull 

you grin 

standing alone 

on the stage 

in the theatre 

of laughable terror

unclean 

i turn off the valve 

& stand before the veil 

i’ll never get clean 

trapped in this suit of skin 

i gaze thru dozens of beads 

dotting the torn shower curtain 

strange beast w/ many eyes 

not created for the world

i daydream about standing here 

until my flesh falls to my feet 

& my organs liquify 

disappearing down the drain 

& how only then i’d be ready 

to enter the world again 

an untrembling skeleton

bio: 

rob plath punches the keys of the poetry machine like a velociraptor is behind his back. he lives alone w/ his cat & stays out of trouble.