Flaws

By Greg Lehman

Definitely grateful, huge fan here

of this bloody vessel, blood sugar blender,

spinning in a calcium cage of factory defects,

inelastic budgets burning on dimension, duration,

charged by dearths and potentials of voltage that get

sad, happy, welcome the orgasm and outrageous effort

alike, on occasion, considers the paradox, then, ceases,

a marvel, but, I’ve got notes, God, Gaia, no one, whoever’s

trigger finger is curling on emergence, nonlinear dynamics,

and Darwinian paring knives, hammers, meteoric slate-

cleaners that do great with disorder, polymorphism,

and brackets on dispersal that chaos cups, spins,

and defines management on our house,

a loosely-seasonal sheen of vapor

and frost atop a crux of iron

spiraling in magma

amid a brutal,

near-invariable bent

for worlds clean of life

everywhere else that we’ve

looked, still, what the fuck, building us

on a pair of glass houses, 26 bones per foot,

33 joints wrapped in 100 muscles, tied off in soft tissue

that healing hates to take quickly below the trip wire in the collarbone,

don’t worry, it just anchors everything, our senses’ confluence,

and pilot chair of grey matter too complex to ever

run right or for long above teeth

that welcome all manner

of rot, lapses in enamel,

dentin, malleable gingiva that love infection

at least as much as the appendix, tonsils, gambled on

the preeminent privilege that dopamine pulls on insufferable ends,

even so, I’ll give it to you, it’s great,

I enjoy it, and the gift is far,

far from nothing,

and not without dexterity

veined in the ghost in the glow

of fibers and lobes fired through, we are

as ruthless as homes can be, ravenous, bioelectric haunting

for an emotional spectrum made to break, mend,

and re-break so it can break again

to prepare for breaking again

after that, and break

other heartsbefore

breaking

more hearts

that will or won’t

stay down, thrive on grace added

or not, look close, closer, feel what we’ve added to the rhythm in your wrist,

a tinny cadence contributed to the unalterably lethal:

we pulse with galvanized zinc, toner,

nylon, polystyrene,

any varnish,

and more,

unregulated

ultrafine particles, listen,

you can hear them, move with them, the body

a song we collect from what we fall through, we, hypertension,

we, micro tears in recovery, we, shrapnel as snowballed inheritance

for worse, nothing safe, none of it

not asking for how much you

can push, beg for more,

need more

of what’s left

to give, then,

more, meeting

ardor with friction

in the fall we’re all leaving

faster, faster.

Greg Lehman earned an MFA in creative writing from Lindenwood University and a BA in journalism from California State University at Fullerton. His poetry has appeared in the Moon Tide Press’ Poet of the Month feature series in June 2025, “Like the Wind Magazine,” “Dark Winter Lit,” “Book of Matches,” “aesterion,” “Turtle Island Poetry,” “The SportScribe,” “Wild Roof Journal,” “SpecPoVerse,” and “HEXFILED,” among others. He lives in Los Angeles, California, and all are welcome to follow his Substack “@gregwriting Substack” and Instagram account @bestcoastgreg.