Sean Patrick Mulroy

He twists his head around the corner as you pass,
then lumbers after you without a sound.
He looms, a black umbrella, following you home.

He watches as you climb into your car
and fiddle with the radio.

His call, an engine stalled, eventually turning over.

You speed down the freeway, cantering of thunder
at your side and gnashing teeth, the angry wind
against your window.

See him in the flash of lightning, sickly gelding,
cold campfire grey caught in your sallow headlights,
trick of shadow blurried by the windshield wipers,
reared up, roaring.

You brake hard. The axles buckle, and you’re flying.

For a long time, all you will remember is a screech
you will explain away as tires burning to a stop.

He trots like drops of water over you, the car,
the road. The blood spilled in the road.

Bio

Writer and multi-disciplinary artist SP Mulroy (he/they) is an internationally recognized poet, performer, and award-winning professor. Mulroy has given lectures on history, poetry, politics, and queer rights, as well as readings of creative work in bars, museums, schools, embassies, theater festivals, and underground clubs on 4 continents, in over 30 countries. A 2013 Lambda Literary Fellow, 2018 Writer-in-Residence at The Kerouac Project in Orlando, Florida, recipient of the 2019 Margaret Reid Prize For Formal Verse, winner of the 2015 Christopher Hewitt Award, and winner of the 2020 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest, Mulroy’s work has appeared in The Journal, Assaracus, The New York Times, Peach Fuzz Magazine, The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, Filling Station, Radical Faerie Digest (rfd), and Muzzle, among several others. Mulroy’s debut poetry collection, Hated for the Gods, was published by Button Poetry in 2023. Born and raised in the American South, he presently lives in NYC.