Auto-brewery Syndrome
Overgrown yeast in the gut can turn bread
in blood to wine. The body accumulates
a host of rewards for us when we do good,
and still, for gin, it usually just orders out
that ruptured compound that gives us joy.
Every drink I ever had was the second
to last one, meaning I meant it only once more.
Every person I hurt with imprecise weapons
was meant to be the last. I am 30. I have outlived
Morrison, Keats, and Cobain. The body, too, drafts
legislation designed to protect its ruling class.
Lear Season
The gray and heavy rains of late
November roil against the roof,
knocking the shingles, frantic like a fist
against a locked out lover’s door,
mid-quarrel: this is when the dog
decides he must go out to piss.
He prods the knob and looks to me—
his eyes opaque like marble taws,
both blind and filmed. He waits to hear
the click of leash upon his neck,
and so we wander through the yard.
Gloucester tugs at the line
wrapped around my hand, then blinks
in drops of rain and settles for
a row of pines, struggling to lift
his leg to mast. Afterwards he lies down
in the needle straw. He licks his paw.
Alright. Let’s go, I say, and he replies
that we have seen the best of days.
Christopher Blackman is a poet from Columbus, Ohio. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Rust + Moth, TYPO, Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, DIAGRAM, and Cleaver Magazine, among others. He currently resides in New York City.
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