Prison Shell by Kevin Stadt

clocks tick off concrete

locked doors and gates graft hot

slang of blood and bone

valves clot God's true children

infertile aliens howl at the strewn

dark

sing for the fences!

don't let your hard down!

prisoners of cogence squeeze seconds

from an eternal tube

mutt-naked cousins sprawl on strained mattresses

thralled in skewed gravity and frantic graffiti

marked by scarred guards who

fake no prisoners

bullies haunted and hounded

in minion minefields

riven omens carved and sliced

flesh split by

tangential transhcan shards and

healed by jagged halves

Kevin Stadt holds a master’s degree in teaching writing and a doctorate in American literature; he currently teaches writing at Hanyang University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Edison Literary Review, Front Porch Review, Neologism Poetry Journal, Nixes Mate Review, and Rust + Moth, among others. He lives in South Korea with his wife and sons, who are interdimensional cyborg pirates wanted in a dozen star systems.