Livio Farallo

cause(s) celebre

picture this in a seminary:
would-be
priests fighting over donuts
and spilling judas jokes
down their
cassocks as they
dance
with cheerleaders who have flung away
their pompoms.         

alright:
forget the number of states.
but
make vatican city another one
with a costumed sycophant to govern and a blowhard
to tell him how.

and then, of course:
little brain crumbs
swept into cremation urns
with the burning of documents
and decadent foreplay. franklin
in a deep coma of laughter.

picture this in a monastery:
unshriven brothers
reading horoscopes and
flagellating cassocks hung
on the walls with heavy rope
as they trade condoms and bookmarks
with the spiritual world.
amen.

 

letter found after the flash

“the wet
is unspiked
and uncommon
and
no explanation but
a peddling of stories.
she winds around
telephone poles
if no pigeons can fly.

  talk to me

  of kettle
fires and barrel
lunches and
all unthinking as
she

  talks to me

  and breaks
rubble with a
butterknife. i
can see news-
papers
blown down a
road sparking
headlights,
passing wind
like it was
standing still.

  sing with me.

  the drunk
is unwined from
the jibberish:
mechanical and
spit filled.
i crush
the hem
of her words
in a gagging
crouch. broken
sidewalk of a
dust forest.
the weather comes                                                                                                          
with a red
wagon pulling the
sun but
weeps like a new
wound. and the
fallout could’ve
have been snow before
all was silent and

  she talked to me.”

 

Livio Farallo is co-editor of Slipstream. His stuff has recently appeared in Brief Wilderness, The Blotter, California Quarterly, Ovunque Siamo, and elsewhere.