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"Vampire Bat" by Jenna Vélez

previously published by Vessel Press

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There’s a vampire bat
Where a Bukowski bluebird should be
And it’s stuck in my left lung
Leather wings beating out the smoke
Like dust in an old rug

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There’s blood where tears used to be
Droplets like berry patch on summer sheets
The same ones I burned on a funeral attire moon

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There is nothing to mourn when you’re the one that died
An overdose of hard to swallow pills

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You skip a day and double up on birth control
Just to throw up strawberries at four am
The taste of bile and broken promises
Of last night’s cigarette and flesh bender

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It’s all red
Like Persephone gums and pomegranate teeth
Swallowed for the vampire bat in me
 

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"Suicide King" by Jenna Vélez

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You carried the king of hearts

In your wallet

Let him rest in leather blankets

Kept it on you like a picture of a girl

Let it burn a hole in your

Denim memory

My hands were cold that night

Pouring salt all over your desk

Where you kept your favorite girl parts

In drawers like baby coffins

I spilled out more salt and more prayers

Because I knew something would die here

I resurrected the suicide king

From his cardboard grave

Pulled him on deck, aboard my dreams

I never told you what I saw in that card

The way I felt a profound grief at

Your hands shaking in possession

White-knuckled around a sword

To plunge unwillingly into my temple

The royal hoarder of hearts was always destined to

Haunt you / Become you

To father your collection of spirits

Kept hostage in your room like a library mausoleum

The suicide king whispered to me that night

With a stinging voice in my salt-cured hands

That I would come to join them

Months later I know

That night

I never left

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