who can help but hope you’re living large

at this very moment, day drinking with scheherazade

& turandot down by the banks of the rio grande?

i hope you’re glowing violet with hunger, cheeks

wet as bone marrow—maria, o maria, the name

for you i only recently learned. same name

as my grandmother, who once spent an unending

summer polishing the silverware of an old german

countess displaced to costa rica. how the riches

shook & shone in her kid-hands, how she dreamed

of her own coming into multiple sets of clothes & fine

china—now, whatever she has, she treasures. do you long

to treasure your roaming husband in all his hazy havoc, maria?

stop all the screaming & just settle down? my grandmother

once said she never hated anyone until her first divorce

at 28, when he screamed away on a motorcycle, left her &

the baby crying on the front porch. said she hated him more

than death. is this how horror stories, like yours, are made?

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