Poem of the Week

Flies

Derrick Austin

I waste the morning in bed eating Talenti and chocolate-
covered almonds infused with cannabis.

The only people I’ve talked to in weeks are the father
and son who own the corner store.

The father blocked me on a meat market of an app.
My ego compulsively licks its wounds.

Your type, a friend texts me, is the kind of man
Lee Pace could play in his sleep: cerebral, imperious.

Books cover the other half of my bed.
In the one I’ve nearly finished, a prince becomes a hermit,

his soul growing receptive and active
like a plant consuming green flies.

Derrick Austin is the author of Tenderness and Trouble the Water. He is a 2019-2021 Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University.
Originally published:
September 8, 2021

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