DonaldIllich

Without Saying Anything

At night I keep hoping you’ll say words,
but I understand if your allergy to language
keeps you down in the dumps of a garbage bin
where I’ve been throwing out hand gestures
for weeks, draining pus from ninety percent
of my communication with the universe.

And in the morning I open the container
to see you typing out fingers on your hands,
rolling your eyes at karate kicks I practice
so no one can boss me around anymore.
I tickle you beneath your gills. You bubble out
soap to clean dirty phrases in my mouth.

If I’m eating lunch and mention chicken salad,
you flap your arms like you’re going to take off.
If I’m slapping a butler for driving my Jaguar,
you turn an imaginary wheel, screech to a stop.
I can almost see your lips move then, telling me
to hush, before your tongue’s forced to lick

the hairs on my stomach below my navel,
wash my throat in dirty ways
only you can imagine.

Bio:

Donald Illich has published poetry in The Iowa Review,
Fourteen Hills, Pinyon, Hubbub, Roanoke Review, and
New Zoo Poetry Review. His work will be included in
future issues of Passages North, Nimrod, LIT,
failbetter.com, and The Sulphur River Literary Review.
He received a Prairie Schooner scholarship to the
2006 Nebraska Summer Writer’s Conference.

www.floatnotswim.com

www.sketchofanastronaut.blogspot.com

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