Death Style 3.11.21
Medea
I’m sick of writing the word ghost
sick of the silent h
the most rotten luck and the most rotten faith.
The children are tucked up in bed like in Medea
crouched behind the roofridge and ready to rise
with their mom on the machina
tricked out in flame.
The fridge motor whines.
Everything whines
like the moon when the big hand points to twelve
and the plot arrives
and a fleet of police choppers rise up in the sky.
They want to ride away from their crimes
unlike Medea
who spells hers out on the sky
in milk that rots and smells.
She carries her dead kids like whelks in a bucket
and everybody knows
how charred flesh falls back to show the bone
but nobody knows
why the river rolls back
to upchuck what’s dunked
there like a drunk
hatchback
with its headlights on.
The river just likes it that way
and the river’s like, open your eyes.
Why is that
river mud
so dirty and so right.
I’m getting tired of the h in river
sorry I mean ghost I mean the fridge light you write by
well you paid for it now
you gotta lie
down in bed in a dress that’s too tight.
The sight of money
draining in the sink
then I hocked
then I hurled
then I upchucked the Voyager
all the way out into space
like a hatchback
with its lights on
and the baby-on-board sign on board
to upload its payload of sound
into the clouds
someplace else.
ha! ha!
The h in catastrophe
sticks to the p
like a stray cat limps around the block
with one paw up.
Medea’s kids get restless
need to eat, need to pee.
Every once in a while their little faces show above the roofline.
Mother thou has slain me they mewl
under their milkbreaths
waiting to be picked up.
They pace around
run the zippers of their tracksuits
up and down.
Meanwhile moonlight slicks the payphones
with desolate glamour
the metal umbilical cords and
dark receivers.
Meanwhile I’m so furious and meanwhile
you’re so young
you think you can hide
what you stole from me
beneath your pillow
I’m looking at it right now
my machina
where your crossed arms cradle
your sleeping head.
