Three Poems
Christian Bufo
as I lay ablaze
in this fuzzy connection
my solitary bedroom
bridges to yours
through a special feeling
that jumps about frightfully
like a child balancing
on a limb of an old oak
a certain fuel guides
the yellow electric
around my skin
inside and out
coating me like
a tight nylon sweater
but really
this excitement falls
from the ceiling
atom by atom
like the first snow of winter
it’s bottled up over many months
and you
like a match
to my hairspray
I feel you burning
the hairs of my knuckles
to a crisp
cat’s eye
yellow collects on the shores
of eyelids like seagulls
nesting in cliffs
overlooking the Atlantic
a water taught with
suffering and burning now
oil sags comfortably
between every rolling bosom
and reaches out to air like
the light of daybreak reaches out
to the already
shrunken pupils
of eyes ignited by flames
only moments before
house
wheezing like a teeter totter
or a pillow on fire
windows glassed with oil
smudged like a face
shiny silver without reflection
tv blank like the
hardwood
and a table contorted
like a worm with bones
Christian Bufo lives in Philadelphia and has work forthcoming in Impossible Archetype and Stone of Madness Press. Born first in Cherry Hill, NJ, they grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. As an infant, they felt especially unlucky at this turn of events, for they longed for New Jersey.
