Christopher Shipman
Christopher Shipman (he/him) lives on Eno, Sappony, & Shakori land in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he teaches literature and creative writing at New Garden Friends School & plays drums in The Goodbye Horses. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Iron Horse Literary Review, Fence, Pedestal, Poetry Magazine, Rattle (online), & elsewhere. His experimental play Metaphysique D’ Ephemera has been staged at four universities. Getting Away with Everything (Unlikely Books, 2021), in collaboration with Vincent Cellucci, is his most recent collection. More at www.cshipmanwriting.com.
We’re not talking anyway. Not
about anything other
than COVID-19 anyway—
singing its monstrous aria,
To love her I stuff
hearts inside my eyes—cartoons but pumping
real blood too—real and red
as a child in summer
Whenever I wake from a bad dream, my murderer gives me homework. He’s there waiting. Not at the edge of the bed, as one might assume, with a hand resting calmly on my back, but sitting alone in the dim light of the kitchen.
I wonder if what I’m seeing is only my silence
my little silent laugh my little look-around
at the forest of faces growing new faces a long line
of faces and now the old white guy is busy
filling out his form hunched over all his words
domesticated as the dozen carnations
you carry where you used to carry
a dozen dead elephants
inside a dozen dead snakes
