Samantha

riding Midnight
bound downtown
wet towels round my ankles
thankless dirty hounds
barking loud
'cause Samantha
Samantha
Samantha's been found
chains round her wrists
fists bound
lists of ungiven gifts on her lips
still somehow making pretty sounds
till the tulips
hoe the ground
mow the yard 'fore the sun goes down
she sleeps for now in her wedding gown
drowned by red wine
and renounced by both the clergy
and crown
a stain on her blouse
sexuality thereabouts
painted fingernails
and sincere doubts
she loiters around
the town
and the house.

TA 

Lake Babylon

we were does
and we were devils
giggling in curtains of dancing smoke
while in the woods ran fire
pale skin and the black bark of southern pine
she grinned like a coyote grins
pawing the ground
flaunting in her pink folds
a skeleton ballerina
blood on her long fingers
bloody lips

a dead rabbit in the leaves sinking back into its own open ribcage
a murder of crows clamoring over this tiny lost soul

her belly full
leading me to a lake like a scar in the forest
where we could bathe
and fuck
and watch everything burn.

TA

Paperbacks

In the book store
in her mom jeans
swarthy curls and wet lips
pawing paperbacks in the dusty stacks with her long bony fingertips
the ghost of the dead store owner brushes past me
leaves me in ecstacy

or was that the touch of her bony denim hip?

TA