Patrick Samuel

since I don’t believe when I pray

where voiceover loses root

half the house the ground gets
unspooling innards from seeds

too much like a sidewalk
thought dormant

shaman please the tribal weed
the little sink holes

shadow bats underfoot

shriek broken smoke pipes
resin hisses siamese

horror from a cartoon
the other childhoods outflash

do not
chant the din crystals make

whiskery in cumshot

I am no longer territory
rootstalk helling it’s hair
for the god-talker crowns
crop heads

circulate my binge-
state
injures

a toga soiling
down
my spine
is a mountain

a fist so into itself

through irritant
principles of
try is platform

is worry
a slippery
muscle
in spit
vernacular opening

such that beneath
flux of fag shoots

my body
no longer
is son territory
prediction
kept politic

accurate
is stand-off

at a party once I stocked up on dildos then hugged everyone goodbye

on the roof back home
there’s tar
and nothing human

besides the tumbled
quartz trying as much to love
its body this weekend

like a flower how the bugs come
broke down with heat and sugar
bubbling fruit

finger hot uranium retro
glass, little sandwiches
without crust

Patrick Samuel lives in Chicago where he earned his MFA from Columbia College. His most recent work appears in NOO Journal, Vinyl, Deluge, and Sporklet.