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Skeleton Poem
A skeleton screams into my poem. I gouge her eyes out, but still she screams. She screams into the thicket of sentences and dismantles my jigsaw rhyme. Her scream is fearless like the blood of an owl that drips from the moonlight in the midnight of my soul. She screams sideways into the center of my verse, disintegrating meaning and subverting all mystery. Her scream is the color of stealth. Her stealth is the color of surreptitious birds.

A skeleton screams into my poem. I gouge her heart out, but still she screams.

Bitch

The voices that called from the darkness
could not see me, but somehow still knew
I was there. Anonymous body,
I was their mirror, their mocking
jay. I was voiceless by choice,
determined to teach them about emptiness,
but the lesson turned awkward
when they construed silence as depth.
They gave me gold
frame for my trouble.
I broke on principle,
wore myself as earrings.
They labeled me stylish,
started worshipping rags.
I wrung myself on a clothesline,
a pitiful attempt at escape.
The rope snapped
all of us back into reality.
Now we wait in darkness.
They pray for justice.
I pray for their tongues
to fall out.