The Application of Eyeliner as an Act of Aggression

After the gauntlet

falls
let us

draw
stencils at dawn

---

The Scene of Several Crimes

A geriatric aristocrat in a tan Cadillac nods
off and crashes into an unmanned cab idling
next to a petunia bed that borders a beauty
parlor full of magazines and heedless heads.

The despondent cabbie scoops a few petals
from the tilled dirt and pockets them as fare
as his last hubcap spins into a faux fur purse
that might serve as a wig, planter, or hearse.

This final choice of course requires great care.

---

Low Frequency

No rest with the precarious nerve of night
through which the fine vibrations of loss pulse
in low frequency, diffuse electric directives culled
among broken manzanita branches, the refusals and refuse
of slight lifetimes spent amidst insensible constellations
in cinder block neighborhoods full of twisted white blankets,
vanishing points, vacancies, spaces where hands drop off of brows
and rise again to dimly comb through the indolent black currents
where humid night hides itself in the narcosis of the heart’s host
in a scarred old town near a river that still whittles away
the sandstone mantle of a salvation that some claim
crystallized under great pressure before we came

---

Caleb Puckett is a writer and visual artist living in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Some of his recent work may be seen in Softblow, Tryst, Dirt, and Philament.

---

PREVIOUS WORK

"THE GREAT OUTDOORS" by Kristine Ong Muslim

"MENINA WRAPPED UP IN BREAD" by Lisa Ferber

"SEA AND HILLS" by Christopher Mulrooney

"BROKEN CURFEW" by Antonios Maltezos

"THIS IS THE END" by Brendan Proce