Speak now or forever

I wish the dead would speak

more quietly, no louder

than other whisperers at weddings

but from closing-in walls they growl.

Do they imagine we can't hear

them, only sense their displeasure

at each unweighed vow?

From the east they look down

upon our inconstant avowals of love,

and from beneath our feet

where their names lie heelworn

reproach me for the tainted gift of mine.

How this breathless moment is filled

with the revelations of ghosts.

I wish the dead would lie still.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet

Inconstancy in a stolen smile

I’ll forever wipe that unchaste
smile from your face, I thought
as, while she slavered lies
through a hydroxyl haze, I slyly
slid a kitchen knife into

a bag of peas in the freezer
and garnered ice for her nightcap.
Sleep tight, cherub, tonight the bugs
might not be all your anaesthesia
will be keeping you dead to.

While she slept I basted her
open lips with agave tequila, slipped
cotton swabs imbued with vodka
neatly between her lips and gums
and when I judged her fully numb

performed a facial labiotomy.
The bleeding I contained with the aid
of bulldog clips and improvised sutures
using fluorocarbon fishing line.
I stored her severed lips in vinegar

and placed the jar on the mantelpiece
where I could watch her smile
fade away at my leisure. By dawn
they were wan, but the broadest grin
adorned my wife’s astonished face.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet