Exeunt

glutted in the bowel

where time eats itself inert

an unnumbered nutrient

passed between stars

dead before life began

made up with refrigerant

held steadily embalmed

in place of light

huddled together to keep cold

grafted onto self-aborting heavens

dust that can’t spread

shed memory

cities gridironed flat

twinkle menacingly

smeared like an insane gnat

cosmoid across a counter

jelly jammed in witness

first we flounder



she sat on a lamp examining her contents

food moved through the ectoplasm

shitting against her condition

these scales leak the soup of me and you

my owners let me off my noose

five foot lizard coiled in shadow

spitting out crack-lighters to see

a reverse birth downy with ash

engaged between her legs

licking each horn till it broke

pet this puddle of a world

I’m the scariest little girl

remainder of what you couldn’t choke

sled here by pit bulls and Rottweilers

to teach you about marriage

queue me into your porn

the devil’s favorite miscarriage

sent back to etch him a freer sky

crammed with birds that cannot fly

obese beaks speaking sand

feed their puke an ampersand

nonstop spray made to obey

skipping just like me

through the halls of my pee

the skin of phones

malt where I groan

every heck set up condos

in the bondage halo reverb

scamming homeward

deceased in miniature

laid planate below fate

I scoop the pores off what I eat

to deface its memory

for seconds on my digestion

I scratch my rations out from the inside

then I scratch me from my rations

death poses you how he sees fit

death will fit you on his front

this is why one man can dig the earth

from the universe if he really tries

continue tearing

I promise you never come

out the other side

the band has been playing on

since the beginning of music

the ship has been sinking

since the earth first coughed up steel

I hold out hope just to make myself sick

every echo breaks its stinger off in my name

we can only know the ghost of what’s relayed

the roles life heaps

a strife of anisotropy

watered to death

the higher we ascend

the less affluent our wounds’ dividends

change for the better is always cosmetic

there are some planes of impulse

too grand for questioning

dependent solely on the light below

never bonded so sacrosanct to shadow

under which everybody lurks born

like an insect on a dead marquee

soon we get to sit between the sights

memorizing every target ring on our back

ignorant of nothing save the flame’s

radiance applied at such a height

a god that loved you would

number your days more openly

this prayer lets us see in our sleep



I feed complete to begin again

digested on the plate

bean-flick pigpen

phenotype for bait

busty as a kindergartener

killed on milk

raised in a volcano

the critical theory of silk

my brain stays switched away

oneiric with its own inferno

people who splash through my panties

vanish sans sanity

god’s multiple personality disorder

goes to war inside this bladder

campy deathbed laughter

your lord shat an apple core

in its entirety and called for life

without salt on the afterbirth

a planet or two have bloodied his Depends

hope the bastard laughs until I’m cured

what a clumsy summons of a boyfriend

many incremental amends

the midwife who pushed back in

rife with ketamine prowess

coke line constellations jigsaw

the burnt framerate of a slur

soon the sun will sprout manure

I was spayed to match the stars

music whistles through the bones in my hole

they’ve been lowering the volume there

since a voice came out the other end

my notions are puppy notions

pulverized alive in mankind’s eyes

trees batted by the wind

like piñatas on a stipend

soothe before they say

whose been faxing in the hay

rolling asses scanned and branded

sigils always planted

our paused firework of a moon

down to magnetism without hue

you’re in my traction

derailed off the tape head

nostalgia’s an unbecoming oubliette

a single day is a leak in my decay

keep posing past the taxidermy

I went dehydrated though puberty

flesh knitted away by the fork of my tail

delivered from a beak in the street

the first worm surfacing on purpose no rain to blame

wingspans cloaking the sun from what might be done to it

I am a vitamin the dark gives off



even the phoenix fell

sacrifice becomes domesticated ritual

an over-populated sacrament

children clocked in in your crops

fertilize cities that smoke their cruor too fast

sucking cubicle fog from a light bulb

we used to savor the tongue severed from our young

condensing the lamb to a singular attraction

embalmed in slow motion

don’t wanna be scrambled outside my cubbyhole

meet me where context is a dead entity passing out its bruise

blood feuds in verse handed to the campfire

scrolling into circulation varicose between centuries

blood is the sole deity you can own by making more

let’s freeze our tech in its haze so it solidifies

enough to finally break the skin again

clicked apart irrelevancies abstracting into kids

a primordial cyborg with a backlog of excrement in its stride

return fire at the online lie hid up those haunches

we are fleas atop a fog pilfering cooperative vapor

divine some blood scrounge up some DNA

get sunk for a sexier dread nought relay

lead complexions disburse

too loose a hue

home away from hell

living proof against paint

quartered in the wrong pose

do unfold your embryo

the dying feast on lives yet lived

count the molecules in your stool

scavengers carry off the stink

newspapers exist to be laid beneath a pet

never an inspection but a bloodletting

queen sat on the monde of her crown

wagging a scepter to hurry up and drown

the first scientist allowed past the clouds

dissects god while he naps

and brings the pieces back

so angels drop their robes

and masturbate beneath his own

for want of weather



all the world’s a slur

in the flame’s blue fur

sparks on little stilts

self-conscious effluent

a beast who stank of lotion

rode the runny ocean

between our thighs

dispatched like stuffing in the sky

fattened to fuck alien suctions

from the vacuum up above

we’re just peripatetic

stillbirths dotting lingerie

saggy batch of bowels

a ten ton sacrifice to the bidet

approved mass shooters

vicars draped in fourth estate

squatting through sweepstakes

no more wallowing in context

we pick our wet dreams over anybody’s peace

like rubbing too much analysis

on a Brazilian wax Möbius strip

air stereotypes what its breathers confess

pestilential altruisms slingshot

between sou and tonsil

don’t become their come

dawn laid maggot-colored light upon many a ruin

immense emboli no cloud could parse

set sail toward the core of the world

celestial bodies slain along horizons

tomorrow’s exhaust became weather

a month of moons shattered and amassed

pumped full of fusillade

dynamited beyond origin

mankind metastasized inoperably

partook of the apples they dropped

an entire species starting out sunk

habitations agglutinating space

time put indentations where a face

unrecognizable with abjection

was fucked sorry

the sun’s departure left us nude

statues of our predators for gratitude

soundtrack of the gods in flagrante delicto

cooing glossolalia peepshows

subscribed to fire’s profane concoction

man’s hubris Lucifer’s boon

by the serpent’s cunnilingus

by the engine of his tongue

we found a bigger grid

to climb ourselves out of

the tragedy of when

intake and excretion parted ends

cells mitotically engineered themselves

an expiration date

goliaths with furfuraceous hides ensued

their scat took on dimension

viviparism became the next scatological fad

we succeeding beasts had the will to defecate

down our mother’s back while she swung on trees

mammals are a syndicated bout of cramps

agricultural millennia later

grown no bigger than the amenities encasing us

offered an option between wage slavery and marriage

many in the throes of penile death grip

put the ricochet of our milk

back in the breast

Narcissus will regurgitate the pond

and swill his mane back into orbit

propped skyward on the meal overhead

these replicas stuttered into tenure

murder is man’s best proof of merit

it’s a shit world life

not much allows for metabolism

but they keep feeding you your leavings

stuffed to the brim

with your own recycling

fed on shit

horsey bagged at both ends

continued in the image of God’s incontinence

opaque pangs of a city’s reach

flock the lordly accident

he shines the seat of his pants with

Christ pans his father’s dung for parts

choice cut limbs selected to feast on confession

the whore of Babylon empties chamber pots

down the mane of her creature

zero difference how the clouds drop

in pieces or a solid log

all one design

we’re a fertilizer that didn’t work

no gold will come of us



she whose adumbrated visage materializes in stages

pantomimes deliciousness

she left nudes you could break your kidneys to

we were done pricking our voodoo dolls of each other

no more trembling prey teased along teeth

bodies dropped off the overpass to the rhythm of our kiss

we gathered our son gumming it like bait

everything a rash adorns

more bones to count in the breaking

we refused to be consumed

for solitudes whose seeds

receive the blank check of a fingernail

when you die they will recede

into the final percentage of a sale

they don’t grow underground

your skeleton pushes past them

in its hurry to the surface

dead and better times die off worse than ever now

like sharing Polaroids at the morgue

love is trying to make something mediocre

fresh again and all it costs is everything

hock your proverbs

position humanity right where you wipe

I haven’t slept but for the echo

of my snore returned as parody






Sean Kilpatrick studied forensic photography, holds a Master's in writing, is published or forthcoming in: Boston Review, Columbia Poetry Review, evergreen review, NERVE, FENCE, LIT, VICE, BOMB, DIAGRAM, New York Tyrant, Sleepingfish, Obsidian, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Quietus, Hobart, young mag, Apocalypse Confidential, Gay Death Trance, La Petite Zine, Pindeldyboz, Expat Press, tragickal, fluland, Terror House, NOÖ Journal, Jacket2, and Exquisite Corpse, MiPoesias, Tarpaulin Sky, Forklift Ohio, Sixth Finch, Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks, and completed several small books with various presses: https://shucksaboutpod.wixsite.com/everything