Michael Mlekoday

PURGE

[purj]
-verb
1. to try and be a storm, as in the way
it always storms the day you leave a place
2. to try and be a saint, as in the forgetting
of the body, its blush and rushes of blood
3. to leave the party early and alone
4. to abandon, as in watching ivy
crawl up the side of a house
5. to set the house or body on fire
6. to kneel on the porch at midnight
until the joints ignore their own whimpers
7. to keep exhaling until the chest is empty
and no longer burning

Michael Mlekoday is a National Poetry Slam Champion and an MFA candidate at Indiana University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in MUZZLE Magazine, < kill author, Revolution House, and others. He has never seen the ocean.