Poetry
Janet Reed
All liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. — Rev. 21:8
I puked my prayers
sweated in tangled sheets,
Shadrach & Meschach’s sister
alone in my white bed
unafraid to burn, unafraid
of bones consumed by fire
asking only to be free
of the saints
whose cardamom syllables
stained your vampire’s
teeth, to be free of you.
Five hundred times
I penned my sin
on wide-lined paper
before dinner, wrote
my death over and again,
let the e and a
loop and slip
like stones skipped
across the lake,
let the rise and fall
of the hard th swallow
the lump in my throat.
I pinned my hungers
in folds of flesh too thin
to bite, fire and brimstone
my obloquy, the wages
of my wishes shipwrecked
on some Canaan’s shore,
a promised land
of milk and honey
you said I’d never see.
I tasted the fat on your fork
tongued the cold curd
of self-denial on bare
plates, cut my flesh
100 times unclean,
erasing you
by erasing me.