3 poems by David Hanlon

Urinal Cake

You might call it persistent rain,

falling through withered air —

but urinal cake suits better:

the nicotine-yellow disc,

the guillotine divide

between urinal and cake,

bitter on your thinned tongue,

a life rinsed and pissed on,

until you become the urinal,

chortling with shark teeth —

not the hard cake.

Still, you rain, you persist,

revive the air you breathe,

mask the stench of waste —

melting into nubs of neon yellow,

tiered harmonies echo,

succulent and coaxing

on your full, fuchsia lips.

A life bejewelled, permeating —

tuna smiles and braided fishtails.

You bleed hard cake in ribbons,

piss out cold, stained urinal.

Guilt Has a Colour

after America’s invasion and Agent Orange’s devastation in Vietnam

Two bold orange stripes

stripped their forest bare—

bones where trees once stood.

Two searing orange stripes

turned crops to dust,

brittle and lifeless as dry leaves.

Two poisonous stripes

infected soil,

rotted roots beneath the earth.

Those same orange stripes

sent families into dry heat,

to lift the bones of their dead.

Two wide orange bands

filled baskets swaying like ghosts,

woven tight with sorrow.

Two toxic orange stripes

deformed monkeys and gibbons,

ravaged their homes

of mangrove and jungle alike.

Two stripes, painted on metal barrels,

marked newborns with twisted limbs,

marked the living with cancer’s shadow.

Twenty-two million

blood-orange stripes—

stitched into America’s flag,

poison lodged deep in its lungs,

silencing its breath

for over fifty years.

What Happened to You?

My therapist asks me what happened.

The amygdala

overreacts—

locked in hyperdrive

from complex,

prolonged trauma—

fuelling

hypervigilance,

anxiety,

and fear

amplified.

This is

what happened,

I tell him.

This is why

I’m here.

“I know,” he says.

“But what happened to you?”

My eyes brim—

not with

lacrimal fluid,

but with tears—

a child’s tears,

falling

like first rain

on a leathered desert

after

thousands of years.

_____________

David Hanlon is a poet based in Cardiff, Wales. His work appears in numerous magazines and journals, including Rust & Moth, Barren Magazine, and trampset. His latest collection, Dawn's Incision, was published by Icefloe Press. You can follow him on Twitter @davidhanlon13 and Instagram @hanlon6944.