Pruned – Zach Dansie
September 19, 2025
No more birthdays
I’m thinking
Puttied against
His hands about to
You love birthdays
Hope before a
Hundred gasps you’re not
Counting
Much longer
Would be sweetheart fucked
And eliminated pruned from
I’ve run out of all the possible karate moves I could use right now.
He cracks you
Apart like
You’re the forgotten grand prize easter egg
And he’s a fat blind pigeon hungry hungry a
Breathless puckered drain where his stomach ought to
(Your — largely long gone)
(Your younger — trying not to be next)
Scribble you in
Ten feet tall
You bursts
I say Stop god please please stop please
In the way
Blood escapes like
Bursts sprays of insides
Sprouting pores
Leaks out my neck and
Above my ears
And where my
Shoulders ought
Would-be sweetheart spared would-be
Transformation would-be wedge-
Less skin terraformed
Blue supple yeses un-
Unbreeched
My bag doesn’t fit anyone
But you. Your face untouched and
Wretched clings to the corner like an orange’s flesh in its rind.
Laid on the passenger seat, then the passenger footspace,
Passenging pissing and splatter in the liner all pinked
The two of us were otherwise silent
Thinking of when he got smashed
By — 25 years ago. Remembers what — then did
With the remains. This is a non sequitur but he feels fortunate.
Your — and your — both have would-be sweethearts
That were smashed by their — to death
Next door Tim the plumber next door heard
You and your — leave
He calls out of work and busts in. Hello? he says to
The furnace closet under the kitchen sink the shower
Your neighbor on the other side of the wall Tim prowls about
Your younger —
For ten years. Are you okay he says. Forty thousand dollars he gives your —.
Would-be sweetheart spared would-be sponsor.
Shelter, food, a ride, a beer, a job.
Your younger — thinks the job is demeaning and unpleasant
But he’s supposedly very
Successful and popular
Such that he gave money
To next door Tim next door because he
Didn’t need it
Would-be spouse spared would-be little sisters.
Your younger — lives next
door with Tim. Very soon Tim “next door” and your younger — next door move together
to the nicer units some stories up.
Your younger — is surprised unceasingly
by the extent to which his emotional needs and desires
“Next door neighbor” Tim begs and begs for initializes conjures
Much deeper swimming than say
What your —/your younger — — springs on
You guys like pizza or hugs
Spankings lightning timbre
Would-be sweetheart spared revenge again and again and again and
Your younger — is just a kid.
One day your younger — cashes out
A few thousand dollars and he
Leaves forever. Would-be foster — ex-plumber Tim retires
And he gets to thinking of how
He’d like to begin dying:
Watch your younger — from afar.
Would-be sweetheart spared years unbeknownst
Of blank muted admirers
Sweltering they’re thinking of their marriage as a factorial now to make the double negative of their boys and girls. That was you.
She said I took the pills you said.
Deer or ram mounts or whatever
Texas Chainsaw Massacre stuff
Feathered and bleeding floor
But then later your —
Was humiliated your — was all agrieved and ashamed
When her — your — — came and she saw
All of you and she saw the mounts and feathers and dusty shit and then she
Left promptly, silent, rushed to the car voiceless, the lover says she
Went home and took herself and her — your — and she gased to death themselves right there in the home your — lived in
Would-be sweetheart spared
Her missing
Family. “We miss you so much!”
Say her — her — her —
Her — her — her —
Her —- her
— her — her — her —
Nothing
Told the pediatrician
The truth. All day
Long
The pediatrician might quiz and nod and get
Some favorable results
And then that’s it that’s that.
Bandage the windows if I could the burrow is infested.
She’d gotten involved with amphetamines in the meantime and it shows.
You hated it when I’d wipe the spit from your cheeks
So as to
Try again
Her — took her — to Cape Canaveral and smuggled the little lady into the rocket.
Bye —! Bye —! and then
Picked her back up later; the ship didn’t explode.
Would-be spouse spared years limbs afire
Your — called and told his one friend “everything” once.
Some hope toward
Being a mystery bene-
Ficiary
But really just to fuck with his one friend.
His one friend wanted to say “call 911!”
Some hope for
Someone of shooting
Apart that rueded brain.
But grace
I made a treasure map but then
The only other person who can read it left it at home.
Taxidermy
Shelter dogs shelter mice shelter cats and shelter rabbits
Garden the basement
— Bend to sniff
You crack me apart like
She’s the electrical socket and
I have a slender knife.
Would-be mouth painted calorically rich
Bandage up
she leaves
After work the — he takes in his dreams with him good company
for falling off a cliff or
being trapped on a broken
roller coaster or nailing the neighbor or whatever.
Didn’t kill a person but for
at the end
(the very end)
Your younger — found a laundromat and a thrift store your — posted from.
Your younger — made videos of himself to make some money.
Your younger — printed out pictures of her
at the library and then he cashed out to go
to these places and ask about her.
Different city different decade different inseam different molar different currant different salts different fluoride different flush
Your — caught him first. She was thus uncongested. Weighed the consequences neutral to devastating
if she didn’t recognize him on purpose.
Her body was undecomposed now.
Just now she squeezed out from nowhere.
Everyday the ends
of a greasy rock knead
jagged her forehead scratch messages
round her eyes and sew hems
at her throat insides
Hi, she said to him.
He had a room booked in heaven but instead your — invited him to stay at her apartment, and
they talked for a few days. Neither of them had seen you
or your —
or your sisters again.