SurVision Magazine

Hear, Hair, Here


OK, I can't stand to shave my armpits.
I don't understand how it doesn't hurt you.
Because in Australia that's like some top notch
kinda slut. I asked my girlfriend if she would
stop. Goddamn, when I accidently look. Well,
I can only talk for the Germans I know.
When parfum doesn't work. Won't shave
her armpits, leg hair, arm hair, or any
body hair, won't even shave her mustache.
Everybody doesn't shave under there
for all different reasons. If the only thing
I had to worry about was a little hair.
Oh no, her cousin doesn't. Not even
with a razor taped to the end of her Glock.






I am an Angel, I am a Demon, But That's Not Important


I bring a message, one
I can no longer recall

though it may be
Ponder This Face

a white blur
starched and curling

inward at the edges.
No flesh—except

for the rounded pink
tip of nose breaking

the white plane.
Nothing more.

I turn to leave
having delivered what

needed deliverance.
The leaves shiver

in the slow wind.





In the House of Kafka


On the bureau, the photo of a young Kafka—
those hungry eyes, unforgivable ears.

Isn't he horribly erotic? she replies, titling

her head to one side, calculating the square
root of desire. I study that face in the photo

again—the feverish flesh, consuming stare.

But didn't you just call him Frankie?
She places a hand over her right eye,

then her left. He makes my toes lactate,

she explains. I glance at her shoes, checking
for leakage. Mr. Keep-My-Soil-in-the-Bank.

Mr. Let-Me-Sleep-Standing-in-the-Chimney.

You just called him Fritzi, I observe. When I die,
she says, stuff me with honeyed hummingbirds.

In the wound in my side, insert the tip

of Kafka's ink-stained tie. I nod and let the air
clear. But you called him Frida,

I remind her one last time.






John Bradley is the author of six collections of poetry and prose, the most recent poetry books being And Thereby Everything (Longhouse, 2015), which relates a story of Billy the Kid conjuring Henry Ford, and Erotica Atomica, a collection of nuclear age poems published by WordTech in 2017. He teaches at Northern Illinois University, in DeKalb, Illinois.