You cut off my hands.

I drowned these stumps in premium whiskey to stem

the jilted flow.

Your book weighs heavily on my pelvis. You were too busy dying to notice that I birthed

this bastard pen.

You eluded me all morning. I scoured encrypted messages with no orders in sight.

My ears have sounded the death knell. Dear Lord, I have

grown too weary.

Her intentions are as seamless

As a roll of dollar store Saran

Wrap unfixed at opposite poles.

She masks pathological cowardice

With witty cover-ups to

Conceal her evil eye

With a working cock

She'll split your ass in two

And write a tale about you later

She is the one your best friend

Warned about but you were

Too fucking thirsty to listen

Auntie lies in a porcelain box. Her black hair ripples at the surface. Her husband works at the blood caked around her ears. He hears the Muezzin's call to prayer. She hears nothing at all.

Grandmother's wide hips sit atop cool sheets. She peels her white hijab from her her head. Droplets of perspiration cling piously to her forehead. She kneels down to roll her prayer rug and pushes it under the boxy bed frame. She is thirsty for a Marlboro and a Nescafé.

Baby girl with soft brown curls bounces inside her collapsible box. Ten tiny toes the size of un-soaked garbanzo beans stick to the warm plastic. She waits for her dead mother to bring a bottle of warm milk.

Her point of no return:

A constellation of finite hopes

Flung aimlessly from the

Broken bow

Death skips like

scratched vinyl

Death taps like

Astaire's soles

Death croons like

Sinatra's vocals

Death blows like

Dizzy's trombone

I spied a ginormous green worm, flipped upside down,

suspended from the ceiling.

Shrouded tip to tip in shredded black, its body scavenged by a mob of midnight crawlers.

I cried for my mother to bring her broom. I cried for my mother to save her innocent. I cried for my mother in silent sobs.

Fear erupted in my mouth. I suffocated on unspoken syllables. I cried for my mother until she saved me from myself.