PUNK POETRY: Everything That Happened in July by Raphael Emmae

Everything That Happened in July

Trips down hutongs and a streak of green

peeling paint on the dumpster.

Rust eat through once-blue tricycles 

like a mess of rot-pink tentacles 

trembling, an octopus drowning

in its tank at the seafood market.

A glass sheet of fog and beer bottle

green air. Suffocate. Oxygen is overrated 

when you're at the bottom of a bathtub

filled with phantom coloured water, puddles 

in the middle of your neighbourhood's

rain glazed main street, mosquitoes dipping

their feet in your sweat. The summer 

is dragging on like a dash of blackberry lipstick 

smeared across your own sun bleached sweatshirt

and the bathroom mirror where you kissed

it when shaving your head. Your hair 

won't grow back before September

and you know it, but that is a problem

for your body's next tenant in two months time

and this weekend is for cheap lukewarm wine 

stolen under no stars and watching plants die

on your balcony, lungs filled with clouds of moths,

paper crowned king of your local street light galaxy. 

--Raphael Emmae