Aaron Sandberg
Birthright
Quiz: How long can you clasp this wet plate from the china set your mother passed down like everything else cursed on you as you stare at brisk-tailed squirrels buzzing about in branches seen through this kitchen window grasping for forgotten acorns from their own past selves before you smash it on the edge of the sink to read the shards like tea leaves in some augury at the bottom of the drain like new astrology made to push the planets into alignment to graft your rebirth wish onto new family trees grown free of your ominous legacy beneath stars and signs of your own making while your own sun still sheds rays that reach through this pane where you hold a cracked piece of the past steady with one hand and scour it with the bleeding other glistened with soap in hopes that photons and salt from your tears will cleanse those heirloom-stained years though the only lights here are the phosphenes you see after you rub your own eyes once you turn off the tap long after you cry?
Cure
Hold the stick
between your teeth
when the medicine’s gone bad
and there's nothing left
in cupboards
to cure.
I’ll saw your rot off first
above the wound
where what the drug
was after won.
Keep your strength
to return the favor.
Bite and look away
at that probable green grass,
perhaps, like anything better
on any other side.
Aaron Sandberg has appeared or is forthcoming in Lost Balloon, Flash Frog, Phantom Kangaroo, Qu, Asimov’s, No Contact, Alien Magazine, The Shore, The Offing, Sporklet, Crow & Cross Keys, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. A multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, you can see him—and his writing—on Instagram @aarondsandberg.