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Grave
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NEW STUFF Poems 2020 Grave —
as in that slab of marble so elegantly imbedded in your
cheekbones, rubbed raw
until that rotten-sweet vintage that blossoms on your tongue
spills sweeter than honey and thick as molasses
over your haggard lips.
Are you able to see past the dim remains of your eyelids?
In them you incised the works of Rembrandt in technicolor
as the acid burnt through your cranium.
Or can’t you recall? I held a razorblade out to you
and prayed you knew
to caress the vein from crook to knobby wrist. Vilification
had seemed your drug of choice
until recently when judgmental eyes roamed through you and
lips opened wide to engulf your spew of noxious adjectives.
May I say, sweet child, that vowels only travel so far.
Tell me,
are your threats as hollow as your cheekbones?
The highest compliment I can
The highest compliment I can offer for such an intensely eerie poem: if the great novelist, Mary Shelley, had been a poet, and had written a long poem entitled Frankenstein, it would have sounded just like this.
J-Called