SHIFTING THE BLUE

I dream of being young
spending my money
on beer. Gently hungover
at work beside the cafe
clarity strikes: no one
in a pair of carpenter’s jeans
should casually say ciao
in Chicago. You can flip
burgers in a Prada t-shirt.
I’m experiencing spiritual
bankruptcy. My destiny:
to wander the guttural
maze littered with multi-
hyphenates just happy
to man the donut stand
outside the death camp.

SCRATCHING THE THOUGHT

I promise you won’t remember me
saying it’s not my prerogative
to be empowered by pain. Necessary
exercise: a game out of money
and the fine art of phony baloney.
People keep noticing my self-
inflicted injury. A shame, my pink,
so naïve. I have never been
drawn to comfort and I resent the idea
of being furniture in a hospital
turned office building’s memory
but occasionally, the prescience
of a patient’s paranoid hallucination:

I’m living in a fog of Off.
The only way out of this agony
is death: my own.

PARABLING THE GRINDSET

I’m a mule and my calves are swollen. My heart
is failing. There is a thick flock of crows
distracting me along the tree line in the distant
wood. They laugh at my uncertain shuffle
through the mud. They know I’m dumb enough
to trudge toward some mirage of rest
just to fall dead at the first touch of shade.

Nick Rossi is a co-founder / editor / designer at Sobotka Lit Mag / Ursus Americanus Press / No Rest Press. His work has (semi-)recently appeared in Gab Magazine, Works & Days, SALT Weekly, and elsewhere. He works and lives in Chicago, IL.