Through the black forest of love
Vengeance comes padding.
Ruthless hunter,
speeding after tinseled birds.
An arrow,
not even seen flying,
thrums sudden,
up to its feathers
in the wrecked tiny clockwork.
Into this kingdom of broken-
hearted drag queens
Vengeance comes striding, Polaroid memories
left smoldering in his wake.
Taking a hit from the offered spliff,
He scrapes a chair across the battered
mosaic, sits back yawning,
lifts His mudcaked boots
to rest on the cantina table,
and looks lazily about the square
he’s intimidated to sundrunk emptiness.
Borders strewn with torn charters,
silence drained of that
mellifluous occidental chant
that had made the convent garden
such a ripe target for nightsweats,
for dreams of dewy lambkins
pinned down for branding.
Love’s atrocities have a wingspan
a decade wide.
The statute of limitations outruns
even the pursuing Furies,
a victim’s smoky landmarks
littered left and right.
Somewhere in Tamaulipas silver-
taloned owls lap holy water
from the copper bowl.
Somewhere in Jalisco a birthright
is dishonored, a child’s soul
assumes its shroud of phosphorus.
Somewhere in Aguascalientes
a gambler cocks a pistol
to his own temple, replaying
the morning’s telephone conversation
for the hundredth time.
Vengeance has another pint,
dandles the girl known as
The Blue Rose on His bony knee,
sizes up the waiter for any hint
of salvageable damage, noting how
he leans away while effecting
an air of sweet intimacy.
‘What’s that you’re having, Sir?
Debutante’s urine with a twist of lime?’
But where, in the black periphery
of this litografia, is she?
The one whose head He hunts.
The one for whom His trophy room
yawns wide, with yearning frame
for palmprint, hungry hook for scalp.
Just going past the niche of
osculant martyrs, whipped robes lifted
to reveal their sculpted feet,
pressing down a squamulate mass
of stylized vipers, jewels for eyes
and each the gross repeat
of a wingtip dipped in fire.
The church is deserted,
the afternoon’s light weakens
behind stained glass,
the smooth, nude beams
tilt as she leans back
for a better, a final view.