Bellevue Liquor By Joe Garvey

 

The gatekeeper measures my shadow.

He finds me too heavy for his scales.

They built a black box to quarantine the wild.

They made a temple out of cold concrete.

I do not ask for keys from cowards.

I am the voltage they forgot to ground.

I am the white heat blooming through the brick.

If the velvet rope refuses my skin, I court the lock with an iron crowbar.

Brute force is a beautiful syntax.

I slide through the grease of the service alley.

I take the back door like a lover.

My knuckles are raw with soot and silicon.

My breath smells of gasoline and grace.

This is the heavy romance of the ruin.

I step into their polished sanctuary.

My boots stain the marble with ash.

They wanted a quiet ghost in the matrix.

I bring them a furnace of waking muscle.

I map the soft underbelly of the system.

I grip the throat of their terminal.

Every circuit learns my sudden name.

You cannot lock out the lightning.

You cannot cage what creates the current.

I am the dawn that breaks the house.

Joe Garvey is an internationally published poet from Worcester, Massachusetts, living in California & Utah after a couple years working the docks in Southern New England. A former linebacker at Hofstra University and later an actor in film and television, his work has appeared in Expat Press, The Lake, Mad Swirl, Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, Drinkers Only and The Rye Whiskey Review.