Precision Engineering :
   Jeremy Behreandt                         
 

 

stooped over a dead
tortoise, barry extends his arm
and flaps his hand like a red
flag. this must mean 'come
here'—another lesson on minor
catastrophes. the flattened,
scaly head sticks out from a
nearly intact carapace. precision
engineering. the eyes might
have burst like jelly beans or
lodged themselves in the tread.

i could press my thumb into
asphalt, peel off reptile brain
and admire the flakes of bone.
barry pinches the legs, drawing
them out. any moment he'll
tell me we must expect thumb
screws or the rack, oil spills,
nuclear winter. i want to explain
velocity or how you can save
the shell if you scrape out flesh
bit by bit, let a small piece
of misfortune fill some
corner in your home.

barry picks up his fellow
pilgrim. he stuffs the body
in my backpack between
the tupperware and disposable
camera. i want to ask him
what burial could ever be proper
enough or how he's so sure
we'll survive the acres of soft
soil with only a shovel and
a slow night to dig
deep and square.

 

Singularity :
                         Jeremy Behreandt

 

Mary pencils me in under 'emergency.' Her planner hums with special cases—a nest of begging blind chicks. Mary pries my jaw off its hinges and vomits textbook insight into my eager mouth. "Sink the lowest you can sink," she says. "Receive everyone, like a valley." My throat swells, unravels, stretches—a riverbed, a fertile plain.

Mary's sky blue shirt hangs, crisp like a clinic, over me. I burp, proud, and reach up. Mary swats my hand. She unwraps the atmosphere. I worry about outer space—how that final cavity might be measured more by the comatose stare than light years or parsecs.

I point to my pants—the heat. "Hush," Mary says. Cataclysm doesn't figure much in her natural history. I mutter volcanoes; I gurgle geothermal forces. Mary's hips press down harder. Vacuum should carry this kind of weight. Mary rolls her eyes up into her skull. She digs new furrows in fallow land.

"Let softness work as a weapon." She squeezes a feather-stuffed pillow down my lungs. Mary fills me with an empty nest. My breath compresses. "Unwrite your complaints. Listen." Mary hums, pious. Blood rumbles over my ribs. My synapses unfurl white flags.

 

Jeremy Behreandt is working towards an undergraduate degree in Creative Writing at University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire.


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