Portrait of box television with ghost of god

Portrait of my father with fuzzy buzzcut & knuckles not yet melted.

An infant boy 

& a box television edge the frame, flickering reruns.

Portrait of slaughter with woodgrain & dramatization in our ears like the homunculus.

The children of the house are plagued by narration. 

Substitute Dante and Milton for Peter Thomas. 

Portrait of flash burn outline 

of the frosty Miller Lite, two decades tall. 

Portrait of other people’s shit with cheap pun. My father 

treasured treasure, stolen valor, sensationalism; portrait of disturbed grave with corpse not yet dead. 

Portrait of George Lopez bloating dreams till

implosion. The children of the house have not slept for 

days. 

Teach me the ancient word for scream & the ill omens of winged nocturnals & I will paint for you a portrait 

of collapsed moors and shoddy electrical work 

rejected by God. 

About the Author

Riley James Russo is a junior creative writing student split between Ohio and Pennsylvania whose creative efforts mostly focus on depicting the horrors of the human condition.