Pithed – Bryce Johle

My teacup cradles a wishy-washy

     countenance, waves folding over flimsy

features like colored paper giving in

     to origami. Have you ever wished

your bones could twist like that, coolly ripple

     into a quaking grind, brick to coarse brick,

without a dislocated mandible

     or a chipped tooth to lodge back into place?

Well, my body is built of whistling steam.

     Once liquid, now thinner, I’m a crippled

riverbed, carbon dioxide exhaled,

     haunting spaces in anhedonia.

Unblossoming, hot, sweating molecule.

     Cool the air and the water will condense

back into something heavy: milk, sugar,

     a fountain of ceramic, paper cranes.

Bryce A. Johle is from Williamsport, PA, and recently earned his B.A. in Professional Writing from Kutztown University. He served as editor of KU’s Shoofly Literary Magazine for two years. In summer 2017, he was an editorial intern at Autumn House Press in Pittsburgh, PA. His short stories, poems, and book reviews have appeared in The Writing Disorder, Shoofly Literary Magazine, Essence Art and Literary Magazine, Coal Hill Review, and Unlost Journal