from The Art of Escape
Pain and pleasure
are amusement park rides.
The larger mysteries concern
me- birth, creation, atrocity.
There is some evidence
I’ve already died.
In fact, that it was you that
killed me and I am
a form of ghoul bound
to this earth in damnation.
The fathoms of promises
echo to you darling those
rising corpses, flooded verses,
vegetative half-rotted
Illegible tombstones at the
bottom of our yesterdays-
I know the names that are written
in the cemetery where you
were supposed to be buried
by my side.
No one else can tell you
the hour or the shade of the
fevered infant, the cherished
daughter a father saw fade in the
morning light, only I,
your undead bride
walking the earth reeking of
fermentation.
I will drag you from whatever
resting place you choose
with fingernails torn and bruised
I will bury you back where
where you belong back on
the sunny hill of the past
where we were once alive,
riding the slides,
laughing at the shivers that
played up and down our spines
as we passed each solemn stone.
“Rides” first appeared in The Stygian Lepus (Volume 9, January 2024).
