izzy

the taxi driver reading stars from the gutter
Mariah Carey’s still looking good
she’s got a younger man, laughing eyes
and the perfect nose for kitty-litter liner

*

sarah

There’s a well inside me, a well, and it’s burst all its buckets and the women are wading in ankle-deep shoulder-deep to snatch the bouncing children who are floating off to Charon.
The dams are all bloating and the waterfalls are roaring and the rats in the sewers are learning to swim. I’m the girl with her finger in the wall of the dyke and I’m stroking the water as it slinks past my knuckles and whispers ‘There’s not a man among them who doesn’t deserve to drown’ and the water in my belly is crying for its mother and my veins are all bulging to be opened and freed and I’m crying and crying to get the water out faster, crying and sweating and drooling and pissing, and I think of my mother with her face a red O and I think of my sister with her knees caked with blood and I think of my cousins all seeping like sponges and I let go, I let go, I tear my finger right out and the waves come on down like a Price is Right winner, like a choir of angels, like a drunk benediction, and I breathe in the bubbles and I’m lighter than heaven and I’m dancing destruction a hundred feet under and I’ll teach them to do it, they’ll see it all coming, all roaring and foaming and blurting victorious and the last thing they’ll think of is little old me and the water they found in my eyes and my cunt and my lover, she sighs. I shake between her knees. She reaches down like a god and strokes my face, whispers ‘Thank you.’ Whispers ‘You flood me.’ Whispers ‘Now, sleep.’

*