Sean Lynch is a poet and editor who lives in South Philadelphia. His poems have appeared in journals including Hobart, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, and Drunk Monkeys. He’s the founding editor of Serotonin, on the editorial board of Moonstone Arts Center, and serves as the Program Director of the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association and Writer’s House in Camden, NJ. 

“A Not Very Brief Description of What It’s Like to Have Your Heart Broken in Couplets”

The night after I fell out of love
Jon Hamm cuckolded me

danced with her
in a ghostly kitchen

disrobed her black dress
more gracefully than I ever could

brushed his fingers
against her shoulder freckles.

The night after I fell out of love in real time 
while describing a cheeseburger to a customer

I wrote her an email
that was devoid of emotion

clicked send to another hell and drifted
into her arms while Jon Hamm still held her

and I lost all my hair from my head
while her rose stained teeth tore into me.

Tore through my solar plexus 
until my synapses switched

fired cannon thoughts through me
filled my blood with her.

My lungs feigned collapse 
I turned livid when she laughed

even the lavender scented hand soap
I lathered into my skin

while dry heaving into the sink
couldn’t soothe me

couldn’t calcify into the armor I needed
so I compartmentalized membranes

into layers of internal solitude.
I choked.

Swallowed swallows
the feathers furthering

falling down my throat but slowly
as I drank my farewell to her.

“Who sends an email to their ex?”
my sister asked.

Me 
apparently.

“Reading the Aluminum Monster’s High School Diary”

I pull at the crossbow string sitting naked
in front of my computer while thinking about
the only island I’ve never been on - 
where she was born - a siren filled with freckles.
How I know what I don’t want to feel.
Her shoulders floating in the sea.

What is it that waters the inside of my chest?
A red shale rock from Long Island -
in an upper-class town I’ve never known -
why do I still keep a stone on my bookshelf?
And has that virgin statue ever moved?

I cannot solve the hole in my ceiling -
so I spit my skin into my keyboard.
I said I cannot solve the hole in my ceiling
and the landlord’s down the shore.
So I finger the string
and watch tiles fall around me.

“After Wearing Your Bloody Sheets Like a Toga”

I used your pregnancy test
for a thermometer when you left me.

I rolled your dandruff into a joint
and got high off your dirty hair.

I sang your favorite songs alone
until I coughed blood into my toilet.

I ate so many sandwiches that my bank account 
went drier than my blood-caked mouth.

I ordered everything off the internet
only leaving my apartment to collect bags from my stoop.

I gathered all the stains you left behind
rubbed them into my skin.

I stayed alive
just out of spite.