shoot heroin, my friend
Tommy used to say. Dead now
five years? Six? Time
is a referee with a face
I don’t recognize. A fly
lands on my hand. A boy
in cleats. Muddy calves. I am
a curtain walking the hills
back home: billowy Mick
and his shroud of linen.
He called me that,
Mick, lopping off the key.
Syllables like ears of corn.
My body, a shovel
of circumstance. A fly lands on
my hand. I lift my arm
to the veneer of his
absence—a clear
sarcophagus, a cloud
wrapped in shrink-wrap.
Mickie Kennedy is a gay writer who resides in Baltimore County, Maryland. His work has appeared in POETRY, The Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, The Sun and elsewhere. His first full-length book of poetry, Worth Burning, will be published by Black Lawrence Press in February 2026. Follow him on social media @MickiePoet or his website mickiekennedy.com.