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Joshua Gessner

Yesterday, Home: Domicide

​My house died yesterday. The worst part, I was there—
​There when its face had crumpled. Warm, translucent blood,
Spilling out at my feet; I stood & I witnessed it happen.

Only a flicker, I find another.          A good betrayal on my tongue.
I dine in it, slept in its tight arms. Could I not have waited,
Just a little longer to feel at home—distance myself?

​For twenty years, I lived with it; loving the inside of its skin, which is
Gone now: peeled back. It is nuts and bults, nails and new
Lumber. Its corpse, painted white and beige, and I must

​Get used to this new body. After all,
I kept its silence, I let the words rattle me;
“Oh,” They sang, “how this change wounds me!”

​And I remember how I was left, picking up bones.

​A Cave Ripens

​As the light flickers, and the Old,
He cries out what he knows.
Blink—He knows the cave,
Blink—He knows it.

In the cave, over the cave, under the
Thing people like to call “The Cave.”
Truth: it is there, in that place. In
A gaping, no one wants to see.
A Stomach.     A Politic.     A Fullness.
These are the real things—its innards, dangling,

I beg you; please, do not crush me under the heel
of those well-thought hypocrisies, I am
already dead. I speak,
with some other voice; do you hear it?
Coming from a grave. That I fear,
I will never recognize . . .

Joshua Gessner​

Joshua Gessner lives in Manchester, New Hampshire, and studies creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University. He is the fiction editor for Ghost City Press. He has been published in Black Hare Press anthologies such as Twenty Twenty, Ancients, Oceans, and Year Two; his poem “Sculpted Faces” and short story "Out of Tune" can be found in The Queen City Review. His other works are soon to be listed on his new website. While he works on his debut novel, Joshua often enjoys watching movies with his parents and going on walks along lake Massabesic.