Stephanie Seabrooke
Dual
The girl I ran down is leaning
on the dogwood, smoking a slut butt
and snapping ash into the sun.
Want one? She asks me, and she knows
I do, and she knows I just quit.
Her flagrance chokes me
like a favorite lover.
Tonight she’ll slip through
the keyhole and sit on my chest,
a sleep demon stewed in lipstick
and tar sighs sucking on my
sheet slobber. She was supposed to
stay on the pavement so I could
paint shutters and pick up
dry cleaning and crease into the ether.
Instead she pulled her brains back in and
bashed my mailbox with a baseball bat.
Now she’s behind me in the produce aisle
pounding against a part time deejay.
She’s wearing my perfume and singing
to the swell of my pencil skirt.
She’s splayed out on my spreadsheets
eating a ribeye as rare as ruth and tossing
the fat to the hell hounds thrusting at her feet.
Even her vowels are obscene, mauling my ears
on my twilight jog. Moaning dear one, don’t you know
we’re doomed to commune forever? Don’t you want
to be my double star on the tip of the centaur’s arrow?
Now slow down and let me swallow your shadow
while scorpion hearts sink behind the summer sky.
on the dogwood, smoking a slut butt
and snapping ash into the sun.
Want one? She asks me, and she knows
I do, and she knows I just quit.
Her flagrance chokes me
like a favorite lover.
Tonight she’ll slip through
the keyhole and sit on my chest,
a sleep demon stewed in lipstick
and tar sighs sucking on my
sheet slobber. She was supposed to
stay on the pavement so I could
paint shutters and pick up
dry cleaning and crease into the ether.
Instead she pulled her brains back in and
bashed my mailbox with a baseball bat.
Now she’s behind me in the produce aisle
pounding against a part time deejay.
She’s wearing my perfume and singing
to the swell of my pencil skirt.
She’s splayed out on my spreadsheets
eating a ribeye as rare as ruth and tossing
the fat to the hell hounds thrusting at her feet.
Even her vowels are obscene, mauling my ears
on my twilight jog. Moaning dear one, don’t you know
we’re doomed to commune forever? Don’t you want
to be my double star on the tip of the centaur’s arrow?
Now slow down and let me swallow your shadow
while scorpion hearts sink behind the summer sky.
Biography
|
Stephanie Seabrooke’s work explores identity, relationships, the subjectivity of perception, and the inexorable march of time. Her poems have appeared in The Shore and Q/A Poetry. She holds a BA in English from Towson University and resides in the Baltimore metro area. You can follow her on Twitter @StephSeabrooke
|
