Philip Schaefer

I want to tell you

I have swallowed swords.

That I have swung and balanced

rings of fire around my neck, my waist,

like a lover. How my hips have been             

bit into, tiger-toothed, pinched concentric

cuts of moon. Here is my body, pure gasoline.

Once, at Halloween, I wore a black plastic

pumpkin over my head – carved smile

inverted and upside down – and danced

like murder with candy falling from my ears.

Friends fevered indigenously around my spirit

animal, which is a bearded woman on stilts.

The truth is the truth most of the time.

Open its jaws and crawl in. 

Bio

Philip Schaefer’s poems are out or forthcoming in Fourteen Hills, The National Poetry Review, RHINO, Pacifica, The Boiler, Toad, The Chariton Review, Adroit and elsewhere. He is also the recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize. Philip can usually be found tending bar at the local distillery in Missoula, where he is an MFA candidate at the University of Montana. He is haunted by waters.