A Day Off

Adam Ferrari

Give me banshee-tattering facewinds around motorcycle curves with fear-chilled trickles thrilling down my sides, then a charging leatherback boozehound on a cheap bar’s parking slab— I’ll smash my fists on bones of temple steel. Give me limestone-shredded bloodhands cramped to overhanging jags, legs swaying danglers scrabbling for a hold on a Sherpa-gnashing sheer face; drunk on smother-thin cloud air, I’ll heft to ledge and balm my cuts in snow. Come the siren-winding cyclone— pummel me with rumble beat of glassshard hail and trident-flashing flares; let me stampede out in cloudburst and taste heaven’s melted ice, then run—dive!—sliding rivulets through the mud; Bring me every touch, Mephisto!— every plush of Gretchen’s breast, the taste of every saltlick on her thighs; loose your furor, world of cages— bring each prick of pleasure-pain, each texture grind my hands and juice soothe tongue. Give me blood-brute heart to crouch on my department’s window ledge and leap out to land rolling in the dew— I’ll roar city-shaking thunders that tremolo low and ring— my freedom rippling through the mist-chilled air.