John Biscello

She, as in ghosts,

as in white-hot incubi

with a seductive glassy

not there stare

that bewitches and allures,

bearing melancholy freighted

with scraped knees, mirror shards,

and broken nails caked and curlicued in dirt.

Locked in liminal groove,

she seems to be

modeling a departure in frieze,

seems to be subtextually grave

in her long sepulchral silences

and arias disembodied

with no middle ground

of which to speak.

She has seen through me.

Cleanly and clinically harpooning

chunks of interior

like pulpy grapefruit speared

by a serrated spoon–

I am at the mercy of this makeover

and time travel hearse,

taken way way back

to the elegy of small hours

unspoken

and hidden worlds

unheard of.

She, as in garden and allergy,

spreading virulent chills and rash.

It was disaster,

and flirting with disaster,

and skirting disaster all in one.

I was in love.