JD Clapp

The smell of cafeteria food and industrial sanitizer mingled with the faint smell of shit and decay is the first thing you notice. You’re in the hospital. You’ve been here once before, after the drunken car crash.

You struggle to remember what happened, how you got here, any of it. Your head is pounding, the vision in your left eye is blurry, your ass feels bruised. You feel painfully thirsty, like the worst hangover mornings. Your lips are cracked and dry. Your fingers find your face. It’s puffy, sore to the touch, and there’s a bandage above your right eye on your forehead.

Mom and Dad, Fucking

Never imagined them doing it
Until I walked in on
Them
Drunk and
Fifteen 
After some keg party
Too pie-eyed to remember the 
Horror
But the years sped by
Bullet Train streaks
On wet glass and
The two that spawned me
Faded painfully away
Now I’m old
But not yet slacked jawed
And holding their ashes and
That pile of bills they left
And,
I came to understand
It all starts and ends with
Someone getting
Fucked.

Myth Man

She found a new man
In a new place
Who didn’t write 
Like he wrote
But was more wonderful
Than the man who wrote
And she held in her gaze
Long enough to melt away
His veneer.

And,
When rain came and
Touched his words
They melted 
Leaving a ring stain
Around the drain of
Her bathroom sink,
A residue rank with
Dulcet decay.

Leaving her to wonder
Whether he was real
Or simply
Verbs and nouns
Oddly arranged, 
Rendered in
Invisible Sharpie
Crude scribbles of greedy desire
She’d conjured before the first snow came.

Unfaithful Muse

On those mornings
When my mind is still
THC and bourbon ripe
Numb as a 1980s coke gummer
And that fucking fog hangs 
November gray, damp, and biting
I stare
Dully down at
These blank pages
Sip my coffee
Pop another Zyn 
Sharpen my
Blackwing to a 
Nub
Cursing the false 
Promise of an
Empty notebook…
A blank thirst trap screen
Wondering,
Is my muse out there
Once again
Fucking someone else?

Doggone John’s bones ached as he laid there, half asleep, ruminating over the death of his bird dog, Stella. Living on the farm his whole life, he’d breed and put down over a dozen dogs in his long lifetime. But Stella, his only true friend and confidant since his beloved wife Bess had died, was special. Bess had given him the pup for his birthday the year before the Lord took her from him. And since Bess’s death, it’d been Stella and him, living alone in the old farmhouse, doing their best to get by.

I stood under the alcove next to the bar door and lit a grit. My mind ran through it. I’d driven all night and ditched the stolen car, an old tank of a Mercedes, on a fire road a mile or so from here. Nobody was gonna find it for a while, especially with the storm coming. I was 250 miles from the canyon I left Ellis, bleeding out on the cold dirt with his ball sack blown off. That was sloppy, the kind of hot-headed decision that gets you caught, but I wanted him to suffer. I figured the coyotes and buzzards will have his bones picked clean long before some hunter stumbles across his dumb country ass.