The sweet sigh of the high note,
this sudden sound cursed
by a mystical, holy body—fading, glinting,
gone in a supernal sip
that burns draining down the night’s throat.
Name me the lonely witness
for this whispered death,
this dark star dropping
celestial and stony out of a river
of unlit sky. Drink with me,
O lesser god gone up in smoke, fill
your unholy un-luck
with those of us strung up by glass-bottle
necks. Grip the amber and chug
us down the way you always have,
with that old-bodied language
you speak so softly.
Call me your own, come to me swift,
you destroying angel, teach
me what it means to combust.
J.R. Allen (he/him) is an MFA student at Miami University in Ohio. He is a fiction editor at Great Lakes Review, and his work can be found in Chaotic Merge Magazine, No Contact Magazine, Dunes Review, and elsewhere.