"Vampire Bat" by Jenna Vélez
previously published by Vessel Press
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
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
There is nothing to mourn when you’re the one that died
An overdose of hard to swallow pills
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
It’s all red
Like Persephone gums and pomegranate teeth
Swallowed for the vampire bat in me
"Suicide King" by Jenna Vélez
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