Your failures wouldn’t even
make the weight
class to fight alongside
my failures in
a ring. One
of my failures set itself on fire and jumped from the
Brooklyn Bridge singing a Bible hymn on
the way down. Something about
Jesus saving, but another of
my failures was the air
in Pontius Pilate’s lungs.
Look any of my
failures in the eye. You’ll melt from
their laser beam glare
then they’ll splash around in
the puddle of yourself.
Even the sky hates
my failures. A failure of mine ripped a
cloud right from it,
put the
vapor in a water
bong and smoked it.
I had a failure stand
on the side of a
road with its
thumb out and a
newborn smile on its face.
A young couple picked it
up and
my failure gutted them
like a rabbit
before a
hunter cooks it. Keep surveillance
on my failures and you
will catch them licking grimy
poles in subway cars then tonging
innocent bystanders. You can
see them stroll nude into
a café, scaring patrons. But
if you stick around long
enough, when the moon
comes out casting
ice-skating rink
glints, you’ll find my
failures knees to chest in
the corner of an attic
with their thumb
in mouth and sometimes
I squint my eyes, tilt head, raise
an eyebrow and ask my parents why I’ve never seen my failures
and them in the same room before.
Julianne Neely, 23, is a writer from New York. She has been previously published in Random Sample Review, Unbroken Journal, Babe Soda Zine, Moon Zine, and Maudlin House. She hates bios but likes Twitter. Follow her there: @juleneely.
