# 40 by Joseph Victor Milford

when i hang my skin up on the hook every night, it hovers over me. i try to hide in others’ hurts. you woke up with a mountain on your face. a pressure. now you hold a volcano in your hand. in December, i hung my October costumes about the palisade to make ghosts look for gods. i skin selves of my self all the time. it makes good omens for kids. live woodwise. constellate. i rehab. i re-again. your quilts are amazing. i shred them. i need to be strong as guitar strings. no one sleeps here anymore. i looked at porn to try. no one sleeps here anymore. ravens galore. wrench and clench me into a plier-man, a man torn; be teeth, a socket set of cannibal teeth i love. henchmen guitar punk Goliaths want to kill youths because of the slings and bright lights loudly. 860 letters to Theo about alchemy. i walked Arles; felt vacant. no francs. no butterfly pigment. Spanish moss makes all of us warm because it sparks the bug skeletons into all-night cinders.

Joseph Victor Milford is a Professor of English and a Georgia writer. His first collection of poems, Cracked Altimeter, was published by BlazeVox Press in 2010. He is the host of The Joe Milford Poetry Show, a co-founder of BACKLASH PRESS, and the editor of RASPUTIN: A Poetry Thread (a literary journal of poetry).