Author Information
Barrel Glass
Barrel Glass was intimate
with heave of shattered bone,
familiar with the viscera;
made better by the sight.
His face a weathered tree stump,
oaken with a gnarled snout -
he comes at you like sudden gusts
of wind from distant tundras.
His eyes are deep and sunken,
but they always carry glow
and reflections of the fullest moon,
stolen from the harvest.
Barrel Glass had family
who needed food and drink and home,
and so he sought fortuity
beneath dim torch of drunkard's stall.
People called him Barrel Glass
because his jaw was always broken,
but he still has yet to lose a fight,
nor succumbed to drinks from casks.
His shoulders hunched and forward-sloped,
he stood a stout and awkward height.
A barrel's worth of swank was his,
if the barrel would be his bed.
He'd forward all his scratchings home,
sleep in dizzy, haggard bouts,
beat some lively bones to death,
seek to find a proper bed.
His knuckles grew as all his teeth
shattered and were thrown down pits.
He didn't miss the taste of things.
He gathered sweat and drank it down.
Soon he couldn't speak again,
the jaw receiving just too much.
Now it's just a gaping wound,
with lulling tongue beneath slate glass.
Abject horror lays in those
who rookie up through Barrel,
who's not above an elder beast;
who's still in love with pain.
The vacant gaze, the mortal leer,
the lapping tongue against fogged sheet,
a pin of heat all through your guts;
suddenly, he's on you.
