i want
to see a judge
that you might
have my body.
you have angled my mind
through subterranean hours.
tricked my brain into
fearing space.
look at my
hands.
if, then,
you stay
rigid-faced
when that Arab dust
swirls
about the barbed-wire,
i’ll look █████
in the eyes,
whisper “it
is finished.”
Michael Prihoda lives in central Indiana. He is the founding editor of After the Pause, an experimental literary magazine and small press. His work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Anthology and he is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently Out of the Sky (Hester Glock, 2019).
He is on Twitter at @michaelprihoda