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Spadina Literary Review  —  edition 5 page 02

verse

Gunpowder and Diesel

by Derek Kai-Cham Hung

You were a bad drink
that came on too strongly;
a spurt of jet fuel ignited
scalding the linings of my skin as you
poured yourself down my throat
and deep inside you turned my body
into a boiler room,
melting my heart,
smelting pulverizing crushing grinding
that throbbing thing
into a pooling silver stream
that stuttered and broke as much as it ran
as you walked away,
leaving it to harden
in the cool solitude of a night’s whispering waft
into sharp curling slivers,
metal moons.

So try strangling my heart once more
and find your hands gashed like rabbits
slit from head to toe.

So try cupping my heart once more
and find your fingers shredded and severed
able to hold nothing as I drop
and drop.