Five home remedies
Craig Finlay
Concoction one:
Joe Bolton should be used for sadboys. Press flowers into The Last Nostalgia. Once dried, place the several flowers and pages whole into a blender with St. John’s Wort. Pulverize. Mix with vodka. Drink while ankle-deep in a river at midnight.
Concoction two:
Nick Cave can be used as a poultice for wild, pulsing fevers. The kind that can shatter your heart in the dark. Nick Cave is hard to come by so use homeopathic dilution to create an organic suspension. One teaspoon of ground bone meal to one liter of rainwater. Nick Cave will object to you taking some of his bones as he is still using them, so surprise is essential. O, children, lift up your voice.
Concoction three:
Keith Haring can be turned into an essential oil so precious that it is used as a currency in some countries. This is the origin of the phrase “Worth your Keith Haring.” The water from a snow globe that your girlfriend brought back to you from a backpacking tour of the Netherlands is, alone, quite inert. Drunkenly smashed at 4 a.m., however, it can remember things. Mop it up with a rag and use it to wipe away the blood. Draw Keith Haring stick men all over the walls. Dance to Nick Cave.
Concoction four:
Hope Sandoval is an excellent medium for speaking with the dead. That’s why she appeared so bashful on stage. She could see them make their way through the crowds and knew that ghosts hate eye contact. Lay open your forearm lengthwise with a jagged shard of an old Mazzy Star CD and collect the blood in a stoppered sink. Lost ghosts will begin to emerge from the mirror, soft and spectral in the bathroom moonlight. Quiet now, they spook easily.
Concoction five:
One part fresh peppercorn, one part lemon, one part honey. Add to hot green tea. A fine treatment for congestion.
Craig Finlay is a poet and librarian living in South Bend, Indiana. His poems have appeared in numerous publications, most recently in COAST|noCOAST, Obra/Artifact, Seven CirclePress, mutiny! magazine and Levee Magazine. His first book, The Very Small Mammoths of Wrangel Island, will be released in 2020 by Urban Farmhouse Press.