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That Rain by Gregg Dotoli


crushing rain woke me
hours after midnight
each drop a flat note
pinged off this leaf or that stone
earth's white noise
caused a natural claustrophobia
shrinking my mind space
inducing fear and inner tremble
knowing I can't escape
until the dark storm wanes
Rain-Felled Glass by Elliott Niblock


My eyes are bats in a furnace
freshly lit. Heating. Shrieking
against the side, their bodies
fists of fur blooming into ash.
My eyes are sand ungraining
to glass. Dunes of it descending
states - slipped to liquid, gas - bubbling
from the nuclear desert of my skull.
Cockroaches thick in the garbage can.
Lithe. Shoe-box-size. Legs'
keyboard-click the silver hull,
they gnaw-suck away a New World
rat - dissolve into their blinking mouths.
My eyes are the yellow impotence,
at a film's final scene, of these two
sixteenth notes, subtitling the screen.
A slim white extension cord slit,
frayed copper tails sparking,
shorting the computing cortex.
My eyes are yours -
cracked on cast iron, whites
pooling in the skillet - unfurl them.