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Eulogy for One Twin Lost

I. BITING THUNDER

The clouds grin
as her arms cradle the sun greyly.
Each step a static-whisper toward slaughter.

A tiny lamb between her hands
she strangles and moves forward. Through
clopping hooves,
hands clap from the draft a pony.
She moves toward. She slaughters.
Her animals claw her. She slaughters
each one
and static-whispers.
She hugs the cliff like a mother.

A wren shrieks
indignantly
as she snaps his neck.

She plummets,
six stories
through thunder.

II. SIX TWENTY

The drunken twin is
curled like a mouse
in her room,
dankly smothered
and snoring.

No sound. Then
a shriek retaliating,
wafting up six flights
like a cold breath.
She freezes
and like a mouse
tastes the air, nose trembling
paws patting the ground.

Her head's out the window
screaming
catlike.

III. NIGHTMARES

Now lost to me are
sisters, twin sisters
fallen to the bottom of the lake
like steel, or streaked sterling
or pebbles. I've no memory
but one's blood on grass blades, silent,
and the other screaming terrifically
Help!

The night is a witch.
She screeches fiery like a wishing stone
clung to for so long
past childhood. My Medusa
casting spells with her snake-hair
her heart strung with suckling pigs
in my nightmares.

She always comes on her broom,
floats on her broom above bloody grass.
Her black cat, Depression,
snaggletooth and skinny tail
giggles like a choir girl.

I see Athena spread-eagled in the wind
wheeling like a merry-go-round
and smiling cold as witch snow.

And her sister, Aphrodite
of drunken love and torn hair,
screams like forever
in a casket under six flights
of stairs.