UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY - 11/2011
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CHRISTOPHER HIVNER Darlin’ He called her Sugar then winked with a smile that slithered. She coughed, choking as he tightened his grip. He touched her hand, called her Darlin’, ordered a second cup of coffee. She flirted with her bigger tip smile never feeling his fangs pierce her skin. She re-filled his cup, he told a story about a girl he used to love looked just like her. He stroked her arm, when she pulled away he bit deeper. She had been his wife, high school sweethearts, died in childbirth, every word a lie, but she softened. His eyes were blue like her dad’s and he was broken. He called her Darlin’, this time like it meant something. He waited until her shift ended, they left together hand in hand his venom coursing through her veins. This Abandonment I saw your demon one night when he came looking for you. I spoke to the author of your hell while he carved your name in his flesh. He had no interest in the pieces of you on the floor that I had been scraping up to save, allowing me to continue, even holding the dustpan. He expected me to bargain for you, offering myself, perhaps, for the blue of your eyes, but I was busy reconstructing you from skin flakes, dreams and river silt. I was in the wrong place at the right time or told the right joke to the wrong audience, maybe praised the right god for the wrong reasons, could be I vomited the wrong sick into the right bag. I saw your demon one Friday night and he didn’t care for me or my cavalier attitude about his position in your life. Play the eighty eights, the song I wrote for you in the key of c. I’ll always be able to hear it. Hide and Seek They were here, I saw them, looking at me with reluctant eyes, the odor of spices in the air. Wanderers playing at children’s games, hide and seek with coiled rope and warnings drawn in the dirt. I went to their house because I wouldn’t take no for an answer, but only their pictures were home, in burnished wood frames, posed for destiny, standing at the windows, guards for the ephemera. They were here, insulated from taste, singing arias to one another, parchment treaties the family currency, signed in absentia by all of us with a pen and an axe to grind. Christopher Hivner's chapbook of poetry "The Silence Brushes My Cheek Like Glass" was published online by Scars Publications and a collection of horror stories "The Spaces Between Your Screams" was published in 2008. He can be visited at www.chrishivner.com. |
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