After

She’s got her suspicions about the prince;

late-night councils with carriage debutantes.

She knows they’re not her hands

tangled in his crown at midnight.

Don’t you trust me, Cindy baby?

Another of his conquests

in fuck-me pumps

who swallows glass for kicks.

Forty cc’s and she’s still

seeing white rabbits.

Tick-tock says the clock

in a room that resembles an egg

or a monochrome rose.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall;

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

Smacks her face on the mirror:

the cat told me to.

Fingertips are not ideal injection points

and when she came down, her lips were numb:

I feel like I’ve been asleep for a hundred years.

Fairy godmothers can’t conjure

what a prince’s mouth can.

The powder on her nose

goes with her lipstick

and the hand on her thigh.

Jagged cut with dull scissors;

allure left on a hook by the window.

He’s got thorns in his eyes;

thinks of golden braids to raise a sturdy tower.

Doesn’t he know that asymmetrical is so in?

This red cape is getting tight,

and glares at the empty basket.

Smooths the cloak against her midriff

before she sticks her fingers down her throat.

Guilt-chills wrack her frailty;

not enough for a wolf to pick his teeth with.

His rose petals tasted like youth;

now it’s just drafty walls.

The musky fur moving against her body,

now a silent milky complexion

with a cold candlestick in hand.

The townie still howls for her.

Butchers’ wives

have no sense of smell.

There is something unfaithful

about hanged bodies

and bloody floors.

Nothing is so tempting as a locked door.

In the cold storage locker,

she gets her own blue beard.

Sea foam fantasies never come true

and oceans lie about their age.

The oysters on her tail

have a tendency to get infected.

She dreams of legs that speak:

if human beings are not drowned, can they live forever?

Dunks her head in the bathtub

to see how long she can hold her breath.

Come on, baby, Mama needs a new pair of shoes.

She rolls golden eggs because it’s all she’s got.

Jacky’s at the high rollers’ table

splitting harp strings with a dull axe,

laughing as an ace falls from his sleeve

onto a pile of beans.

Press your face to stone,

you can hear the children standing still.

Eyes glow green in darkness

with quarter-notes reflected back.

Deaf boys don’t dance.

The rat-bastard’s laughter

like clinking change.

Depth is just a play of surfaces.

She’s licking blood from the wall.

Royalty tastes like mortar,

or a frog in the throat.

What’s the matter, Princess?

You look a little green.

She hasn’t slept in months

courtesy of the grisly nightmares.

They say that post-traumatic stress

makes people seek routine.

She’s got a rosary tangled

in her gilded tresses.

Everything unholy comes in threes . . . Wait.

Obsession, like a gun to his head;

he likes the taste of metal

as long as it’s the yellow kind.

Last time he checked

he was still pissing glitter.

That can’t be good.

Crying babies are a close second

to the old ladies coughing up their lungs.

He was torn in two —

figuratively, of course.

He hears the welfare-mom at the wicket:

What do you people want from me? My first born?

Name, sir? the employment officer asks,

noticing the space left

blank.

The finger in her lap

wouldn’t have been as unwelcome

if it had been attached to a body.

You think you can eat another girl

right in front of me

and I’ll stick around?

Ashes in mouths make caged birds sing.

Seven men

and she’d had every one:

who’s the fairest of them all?

She lays, fingering

hearts on a fogged up mirror,

bruises on hips.

Poison apples come from seeds in bellies.