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Susan Slaviero
David McLean
Sergio's storm

and you were snow blind a time
the dry traces of ice in eyes
the spoor of spared tears
a mother's torrid heart could never share,
her vinegary caring
she poured away to persian decay
and a vicarious density of selfish pity
while you walked like Gretel into her witch's cauldron
hidden in the biting bitch's blackest night,
purblind eyes
that built her heaven of pleasure
in glee at his hell's cloying despite
her mumbling Munchkin-mantra
preserved for gypsy brats
in state supported junkie-flats

and he lies in the cold ground his undead heart-life
instead of full fathom five
but she does nothing to remember that
just lies.
lamentation of the sea witch
        (after Melissa Culbertson)

drown that lovesick
little liar.
that necrotic voicebox
that trident, gore-slick with fishgut,
the lucid dream of legbones.

that siren - she's
tender bubbles and ocean eyes and I'm
bloody aneurisms,
squidfingered with poison
ink dripping flotsam that entangles your albatross;
driftwood doilies, undertow.

she's fine-finned
she's tongue-lovely
a nudibranch.
she's anemone lips,
the edges pink and pretty, but electric.

now, she walks in kittenheels
imagining a coronet instead of combs,
a tapestry, an echo during high tide,
an empty throat.