Justin Karcher: The Opioid Zodiac
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
The Opioid Zodiac
Cancer
Antidepressants
washed into the ocean
make crabs more aggressive
more daring
they take more risks
they become
successful cloud rappers
they wear Adidas tracksuits
they die young
Leo
Every city I’ve been to has
an overabundance of
lion statues
some stand guard
in front of apartment buildings
where the addicts inside are
bashing their hands bloody
against a god
who looks like a cactus
all those needles
courage is everywhere
Virgo
A bad harvest year
streetlights suffering
from mild seizures
day or night doesn’t matter
carry elephant bones
in the bags
under our eyes
talk a lot about memory
farmers’ markets
that are really cemeteries
Persephone sitting alone
under a tree
dripping with maggots
she’s singing “Heart of Gold”
no life here
but hang in there
Libra
Every night
the golden birdman
parks his Egyptian food truck
down by the twitchy river
but it’s not really
a food truck
an illusion
he’s selling
the afterlife
a scale
to measure our hearts
we wait in line
sink like stones
wake up in nests
Scorpio
25 songs on Drake’s album
Scorpion
released June 2018
so far this year
freelance writers
making shit money
have inked
25 obituaries
for friends of mine
someone drowns in a tub
nearly every day in America
sometimes they confuse
dangerous scorpions
for bars of soap
the struggle to
get clean
Sagittarius
Sometimes
hurricanes
wash wild horses
out to sea
but the lead stallion
always keeps
most of his harem together
on higher ground
they put their butts
into the wind
ride it out
watch their friends die
somewhere
Lady Gaga is riding
the ghost of a horse
she loved very much
Capricorn
The stranger is wearing
my dead friend’s headphones
he declares, “Eminem is the best
the greatest of all time”
everybody hates everybody
but the party’s still going on
we pluck stars from the sky
they explode in our hands
they’re not really stars
just grenades wrapped in glow tape
now our hands are gone
we try smoking, but can’t hold the cigarettes
so we drop to our knees
dig in the dirt
search for the right words to say
Aquarius
Summer left a long time ago
now homeless kids
fill up buckets with snow
they use blowtorches
to melt the snow
they fill up water guns
with the blood of winter
they run through the city
spraying summer on depressed adults
oh beautiful youth
never turn into cupbearers
for drunk birds
oh beautiful youth
always be in control
always dream of better things
Pisces
The father of all monsters
rises from the heartland
spits out poisonous goldfish
in all directions
eyeless mothers
catch the carnival fish
with butterfly nets
now they have new eyes
plugging the holes
in leaky pipes
with the abuse
they’ve been given
blessed are those
who see the world
for what it is
but still love
unconditionally
even when their eyes
go bad
even when their dreams
float to the surface
Aries
High school teacher
tired of all the funerals
climbs a ladder
to the top of the clouds
grabs some icicles
hanging from God’s gutters
back on earth
she puts the icicles
between her fingers
now she looks like Wolverine
the animal in us all
she’s ready for war
she goes to the club
where pharmaceutical reps
drink the tears of a nation
she tries to stab them
but her claws start to melt
they fall off
a heart too big for this world
but the music keeps playing
Taurus
Coming from a small town
you don’t have a lot of opportunities
born into it
thrown from bulls, stomped on
prayers weighing 2,000 pounds
your chest collapsing if they land on you
sometimes you think, I don’t know
what blood looks like anymore
so you throw a bottle of red wine
through a stained glass window
everyone loves glass on glass
everyone loves scar on scar
good people devoured by nothingness
a color wheel of plasma just rolling along
Gemini
They say
identical twins
feel each other’s pain
can read
each other’s mind
I imagine a world
where supernatural empathy
turns us all
into identical twins
eating
from the same plate of shit
every one of us
having the same stomach
every one of us
having the same ache
Justin Karcher is a Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright born and raised in Buffalo, New York. He is the author of several books of poetry, including Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015). He is also the editor of Ghost City Review and co-editor of the anthology My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry (BlazeVOX [books], 2017). He tweets @Justin_Karcher.
