new work: rogue without a cause

okay, something new that i'm toying with. a little departure in style for me... but change is good, yeah?


Poems in the Key of X: Rogue without a Cause

Marie starts too many conversations
with "—Ophelia knew how to swim."
She finds herself kissing strangers,
drawn to the scent of an open wound;
reading their lips like tea leaves,
like tarot cards, like a leper’s smile.

She’s a half-lit cigarette in search
of a lung, a flask of whiskey
tucked in the Senator’s hip pocket.

She’s comforting like Prometheus
with a broken lighter… or a burning cross.
She’s starting to learn the awful difference

between mirrors and windows, rosaries and candles.
Her smile is borrowed from the library, her laughter stolen
from a music box. Her favorite place is silence,

her favorite color: evening. Marie knows secrets
to make the cotton blush. Her ribs are recovering
from their dreams of shrinking. Her voice is coal dust

after a cave-in. From her grandmother, she inherited
the art of wilting and a mean left hook. From the grandfather
clock, she took steady hands and a blank smile.

She's learned that moonlight manufactures lies,
and backseat bargains aren’t worth the price
of the steam they’re written in. She hears voices

echoing from the chasm of her mouth,
ripples spreading across the pond
of her eye. There are abandoned shadows

lurking in the grotto of her skull, gas lamps
pale and guttering in their hands, yellow fingers
of light interpreting stone. Marie has waded

into the mass of humanity swimming around her,
shutting her eyes to the river of flesh and motion,
her arms just now beginning to tire.