23.30 WRATH

Trying to write eight poems on the last day of April to finish up 30/30. Thank you to Rachel McKibbens for the prompt. Farewell, National Poetry Month. It’s been really real.

WRATH

The star of his funeral
is my face, stoic as a stillborn
whose mother suffered
punches to the gut. 

The weeping girls with their black lace
argue over who gets to be The Widow.
They brew a tornado of shaving razors,
steak knives, sick needles
and huff it my way.
 
Curse my face
and its drought of sadness.
Spit why are you even here?
Waiting for a single tear,
even a flashof tooth.

I approach his neat corpse,
grab the crotch of his pants
where he once kept his weapon,
hard. Utter to make sure
he’s really dead. 

With that, the stitching
of their skirts pop, letting down
the hems of their dresses
to conceal their ashamed knees,
bloody from kneeling
at his shrine.

When the paparazzi tells this story,
they make sure to mention I did not wear black,
but a bonfire.