"RUST BELT CHEMSEX PINDARIC"

Rachael Haigh

The Chorus laments:
                                 As our life here had its long heroic period followed by a dark age and re-birth    
                                        as the Greeks of coy comparison, it remains
                                        a cruel reminder sex is weirdly omnibus
                                        vaulted tracks of fate and swamped foundation.
                                       
                                 We suffer because we are here. Sex templed us. To suffer revolt
                                        in one’s own then is irony heaped, unbearable.
                                        So Colonid in a way, us reminded nature could con-
                                        vene divine council, confirm the only inexorable God  
                                        one breathed or knew. Death is celluloid spectacle:
                fires of wicker in midsummer. Only sex is real. No Kali of the calming grimace, no      
                     envaginated warmth companioned with us, this

                   is wheel over wheel, priapus mobilé, symphony of cartilage cathartically                  
                       swelling and encounter’s quell in ecstasy  
                          or shame, equally welcome, drownéd in endless pearl.

Such ordinary dins of small talk with cockeyed jocks
                  so frequently, so rapidly found
   
                               extraordinary ends
                                                                       must prove
                                        existing larger hedrons
                                                                     amid
                                                        much stinging mist
                                                                 of life unfaceted.

-- Ryan Haas lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri.