Kiss it Goodbye by Ross McCleary

Issue 11

On a dark desert highway, there you stand.
There’s talk and it sounds so familiar:

He was a hard-headed man on the street,
She came from Providence with cool wind in her hair.

“Well baby.”

“Hey there, how are you?”

What kind of love have you got
When you’re out there on your own?

Source & Method: The poem is constructed from the opening lines from each song on the Eagles’ album ‘Hotel California’ and then mashed them together a little. I actually wrote the first draft of this 3 years ago, sent it to a friend, who liked it, and then did a grand total of nothing with it. I then rediscovered it today, had a tinker with it, and settled on its final structure.

Ross McCleary is from Edinburgh and is a poet, fiction writer, and podcaster. His work has recently appeared in Pop To, Structo, and Pushing Out The Boat. He co-edits podcast journal Lies, Dreaming as part of the Poetry as F*ck collective.

Sex on Fire Rearranged into a Literal Presentation By Ross McCleary

Issue 5

 

I’m on fire and
with your pale lips you’re talking of soft alley sex,
the rattle your knuckles make, of bones breaking.
You’re watching it transpire
but with all your talking
the sound is consumed like a fever.
What’s driving you tonight?
It’s not just kiddie play.
As the greatest people are,
I’m on fire.

You lay still, are open.
I could transpire
While you’re watching on.
Is dark fire what’s driving you?
To taste the fire is to taste
the commotion of your sex.
You transpire like sex, don’t you?

A day on they’re dying but
What’s forever to them?
We’re the ones sex has consumed.
I just know it feels the greatest.
Oh, your head: it’s on fire.

Laying where the greatest sex is,
we’re consumed, dying.
It is hot.

 

Source Text: Kings of Leon, “Sex on Fire”.

Ross McCleary is from Edinburgh. He was born 9 months after Jorge Luis Borges died. He has a novella being published in July through Maudlin House.