honey
Honey
by Hanna Elson
Is the honey-pits, that place called Whispering Whiskey
where your parents met, is that why
you scoop out guts, wedge them in between yourself
and every glow bug? It was silver and smelled like cunt.
Oh, that girl, did I tell you we fucked in Julia’s dad’s bed?
Raised on stilts over the water: his dirty slacks, an old
ugly carpet. Dead skin everywhere. Is the
heart/mind/body/soul story, that place—it’s so
full of shit—is that why your lover
took all those sleeping pills? Is that
the boy you lied about? I got so high on his
probation story. I said it over and over: boy,
boy, boy, boy. Someone drove us to the gas station, it’s where
I met Sheila. That was the girl. Her silver-sequined
dress stretched out with her knees, she was wearing blood-
stained underwear. She reminded me of myself.
She looked like a whore. That’s why you started drinking
like you were starving. Jim Beam. You were laughing,
I think I’m in a turn of the century novel. Is the honey
and the whiskers on your face, is the story that goes
nowhere because that’s what life is like, that place
called Caterpill, Scatterkill in the dead town an hour
south where I brought Sheila, is that why
you jerk off and think of my tattooed legs
then dream the two of us died under a bus?
You wake up and me and Sheila sitting there on your
throw rug makes you salivate because we’re alive
and we think you’re dead. You’re just opening your eyes
because it’s some tic dead people have for
a day after they’re dead.

this is incredible!