The Burning Space with HD Mirrors by Brandon Shane | Cluster One

Alone in a dark room,
doors being pounded for money,
even now a chat bubble appears,
someone asking for a lifeline,
help with their bills, or another scam
trying to take crumbs distilling
from a rich man’s feast;
the plot is a studio apartment
in Los Angeles, where gunshots
equally divide with smiley faces,
celebrities and academics
snorting high society mansions,
a mile away from American carnage
alive with methanol and botulism,
a poet messages me,
and says they like my stuff,
while police sirens wail, ambulances
arrive at some discarded scene,
some mornings I wake up
and stare into the screen
before the window,
where there’s police tape
already wilted and inglorious,
and my good friend Julian
is drinking coffee in London,
saying how some day I’m going to blow;
I don’t believe him (unless)
because I smell burning flesh on late nights
running to drug stores hit up for quick cash;
returning to bright screens, reeled
by anglers’ continents away, clouds
pouring ice like a baptism of summer;
late afternoons about to die
from robbery or ordinary bad luck,
someone has liked a poem
I wrote about growing up without
a father, among other common things,
and I laugh at the absurdity of it all,
handful of miles away
sits Charles Bukowski’s grave,
pissed on, shit on.


Brandon Shane (he/him) is a poet and horticulturist, born in Yokosuka Japan. You can see his work in the Argyle Literary Magazine, Berlin Literary Review, Acropolis Journal, Grim & Gilded, Heimat Review, The Mersey Review, Prairie Home Mag, among others. He would later graduate from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in English. Find him on Twitter @Ruishanewrites

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