Blank Sonnet #58

KEVIN CLAY

March 17, 2020

Let the haruspex examine with care 

the bruised and bleeding subject. What secrets 

might be read there, what prophecies foretold, 

what ministers ordained? I am less than 

equal to the roaring dark—I shiver 

under the covers, cold. My feet tingle 

with the not-cold foretelling. The sufferance 

of time is not to be had. My fingertips, 

my earlobes are numb. A little germ of death 

was planted within my teeming flesh so 

long ago. Hungry for the flesh of others, 

I sought, too, the solace to be had there. And yet, 

for all that frantic filling up of voids, I 

have encompassed in the end, no more nor 

less than my own death. Make me laugh at that.

KEVIN CLAY lives in Arlington, Texas with his wife Beth. He has published in the Southern Humanities Review, the British periodical Staple, and in many other periodicals. He has taught at many different universities and colleges, and is presently retired and teaching part-time at Mountain View College in Dallas.