what do you call

the only-so-many woundings

tht may befall

a single body?

River Phoenix is long dead,

& as young Keanu Reeves in the 1991

feature film My Own Private Idaho,

i live all proof no need,

a loose canvas filled w blood & such,

delighting in facsimile as a

grift-living, coat-slinging pageantry,

e’er ingress-ing, e’er a travesty,

the sequel to a blighted sore; & so,

abandoned by young Keanu Reeves

in the 1991 feature film My Own Private Idaho,

i am living to be murdered in Rome—

in two weeks, i will be holding you

for the first time in a year;

my love is a graceless, heaving thing,

a behind-the-scenes calamity—

& long dead River Phoenix

is now long-dead enough

to have lived & died again;

i ache w/o wordings for them—

a killing chasming far far wider than

our final shot of young Keanu Reeves

attending to his father’s funeral

in his newly-purchased skin

 

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Faye Chevalier is a Philadelphia-based poet and essayist. She is the author of the chapbook, future.txt (Empty Set Press 2018), and her work has been featured in The Wanderer, Peach Mag, Witch Craft Magazine, the tiny, and elsewhere. Some of her awards and recognitions include being the first ever poet to have work published on a cyberpunk tabletop rpg podcast (Neoscum 2018) and also a Pushcart nomination. Find her on Twitter where she cries about cyborgs, vampires, and having a body at @bratcore.