::: SKIDROW PENTHOUSE :::

Blood and fresh soil, all she needs
a bite of sun, a flat foot stumble
on the cracked asphalt. She recalls
tending the camellias, scarlet silks
bleeding from the front porch, spilling
to the sidewalk where she lies crooked
in her own blood now, warm sunshine
basking and her bones throb, she recalls
her life, the story she tells herself
over and over, imprisoned in the whirl
of her narrative with such ruthless devotion.

Behind the rotten wood of the screen door, a man
the illusion of material reality, more
moon than man, pale imprint of a face
so distant, so cold he leaves frost traces
on the swirls around her until she points
the death-bone and his daily six-pack run
leaves her crushed under skids. This is not
my leg, she thinks of white mushrooms in rain,
so moist and crumbly in the heavy air.

This is not my sky, she thinks, blinded
by the throb of a sunlit skull, she caresses
each talisman, each wound rubbed gently
between tremble of finger and thumb
like stems and petals she thinks of fountains
of azaleas that pour from her veranda
red, red, red down to the rich black earth,
to the dervish of cement, her killer, her savior.

He will crash the Chevy into the 7-Eleven
maplined eyes like a red moon swimming up, up
in a black sky face, silent, unreadable.
No one will drive up the dirt until dusk.
You can fill your bones with explosives,
she thinks, or with hoards of stars. Still,
the moon, cleanshaven, holding the sea in place.

Virginia Aronson