wildscape. literary journal

car crash salvation
by K. Sundaram

for Sal and i.

At 0 mph, two briny bulbs half-coalesce into a venn
diagram. Bodies soaked and folding like a paper boat:

                          to kiss another man is to sacrifice language for half-dead
                          oxygen. To find what is similar and splay yourself

unquivered. We are anti
-devolution, a mine-field

		          of naked bodies doused in glittery gasoline. Sal, 
                          you told me once your greatest fear was being

set on fire. As if your fingers weren’t already blowing
a fuse, reeking of borrowed flesh. There must be 

		           temporal regret beneath those unshuddered punches 
		           blooming along the root of my jaw. Punches pleading

each tender bruise of
love into erasure. Punches 

                          only cradling them into prominence. What do you call a
                          corpse the highway forgets to swallow? A poem that refuses

to liturgize? You paginate us, uncorked and frothy, before 
burning our page. As if you want to remember

		          but don’t remember how. Between each blow is a braided
		          feather, a supercut to sweaty coffee grounds and antonyms.

Californian summers
unspooled in the back

		          of your SUV swearing birthrights into a hymnal. My fingertips
		          are bleeding bulbs. I recall: my throat roped, boated, tied bayside.

Salivation, without me tucked next to your name.
Only Salivation. t’d into a holy white cross

		          I feel you liquify on my back but it's just tears. And I lend you 
                          renewed skin cause no more is left. Hair falls like a pallid whisper,

salty waists firmer 
than the crosses in

		          our eyes. Sal, I crave to lowercase us till you are vapor. There 
                          are incalculable ways to dent a summer boy across your body. 

There’s only one way 
to repent for missing grace. 

about the author // K. Sundaram