allegiance

rub against it, where

rub against it, where it fills your mouth like gum. and pulls the roof to tongue. and bad shapes your teeth to soothe. say no until it falls off your bike like a chain and catches in the spokes. fall on its groan like a hard pillow. like a spike, the belly. fall on it like the boy you said it to, then ever stuttered after. knock your forehead against its forehead. chip its own tooth. say it until your hands itch from saying it. say no until you lose friends for saying it. until its bridge breaks and thousands fall from its ropes. say no until everybody drowns who can’t swim in it. say it until you’re one of the drowned. until your bodies decompose under the river and blue. until its machines pull all of you into its metal chains. say it while the oil fills your spines with salt. say it while the air lifts geese, indifferent. say it until your own jaw is slack and the spittle falls long like a sad drool in a pool of no. say it 74 to god. ask why your mouth is filled with lumps of no, rocks of no, silt filament filling your lungs of no. no to the bugs and the fish. no to ten boggy fingers. say it to the crust rib, the thick, drenched scar, the thump of the sunken breast. say it until every part of you can shatter bone. until there is enough cold locked inside you to thaw a black fog. 75 ...