Six Poems
by Rachel Christina McConnell
Send Nudes
I strip the lampshade down to the wire;
a bare bulb for better lighting.
Exposed, my body feels like a crime scene.
The faint mist of a finger-smudged lens,
the halo of a chalk outline:
dead girl in a rented room,
limbs akimbo, the jagged
geometry of a cold case star.
A puzzle box of flesh and bone
no one cares to solve.
He is a criminal who left no mark.
I am the lack of evidence.
My disembodied hand plays the Weegee—
a regular squeegee boy turned flashbulb medium,
spelling out the haunting.
I imagine his interest as forensic—
an autopsy of desire.
Trypophobia
My skin, a gilded labyrinth of hexagons,
a living, breathing honeycomb, woven
with golden shadows and wax. Each cell,
a witch’s eye, watching, waiting.
The world, refracted through a thousand
lenses, distorted and magnified, a hall
of carnival mirrors that warp reality.
A faint, electric buzz sizzles my veins,
a nervous bumble beneath the surface.
I am a mosaic of gold, an alchemy of light.
My honeycomb hide, a canvas of terror. The
bees, my children, are boring into my flesh.
Each pore, a gaping wound, oozing nectar.
A frantic, buzzing horde invades my soul.
They crawl and they cluster, a maddening
swell, a molten mob of seething amber.
My body, a swarming, sticky catacomb,
the corpse queen of a raging hive.
Witch Barbeque
I was born purple, with an umbilical noose
around my neck—a perfect gallows girl,
having no mind to sink. Hag-seed hanging
from the blood-knot of my mother.
The moon shrouded the sun the way
she strangled my light, and I paled
in her shadow.
I was her sheep clone, her little
sacrificial lamb, bound to the horns
of her altar, to bear the family curse.
In the name of Jesus I drink three
Bloody Marys and see her face
in the mirror, the blackest
of them all.
The antichrist is a child bride,
a crucified virgin. By fifteen,
I was Persephone; the sun’s rays
should have been caution tape
strewn across the meadow,
but the narcissus hypnotized me.
My head lolled in the wind.
It was an escape from my mother,
to elope with the devil. In the
shape of a wolf, he spied me
with eyes burning brimstone blue.
I was so thin he could crack my spine
and read between the lines. He
spirited me away
to a promised land filled with
forbidden fruits. In the branches
of my arms bloomed an orchard
of pomegranates. He broke my
fast with ruby-red arils that lodged
in my throat. He claimed it was
I who held him captive.
Like the flank of a gazelle, I was skewered
and cooked on a splint, witch barbeque
with a pinch of paprika. The velvet petals
crowning my head wilted; soft and
wrinkled as braised tomatoes.
My muscles were tenderized in hellfire.
He sank his fangs into my wine-dark flesh.
Under the pomegranate tree, the serpent
awakened me. A crown of candles blazed
upon my head as the ravenous shadows
plucked out my eyes. The devil’s fingertips
were spider legs on my skin. He locked
the garden gate and warned me that his
jealousy was as toothsome as the grave.
In the darkness, I learned to see through
the stigmata holes in my hands. Every time
he crucified me, I bled pomegranate juice.
It took me six years to grow back my tongue,
to learn the incantations to escape; one year
for every tart seed that burst
in my mouth.
I swathed our children in corn silk,
hid them like swords in green sheathes.
He threatened to take them from me, to
sacrifice them like pawns, but I made
the first move. Checkmate. The black
queen is the most powerful piece
on the chessboard.
Labyrinth
When my old man drinks, a demon rides him.
It unravels the spindle of his lizard brain,
and he bellows like a bull.
I am the Lady of the Labyrinth.
I am the Minotaur’s whore.
He gores me with his horns.
Athenian youths cower
in the next room,
waiting their turn.
He body slams me
with a porcelain crack.
Moonlight bruises blue.
The walls shake.
The earth quakes.
It’s raining plaster.
Cops are banging down the door.
The neighbors must have called them.
They separate us, interrogate us
with blinding flashlights.
Then, like square-dancing swingers,
they do-si-do and trade partners.
One pities my bruises, the other flies into a rage
over the bloody scratches he says I left on the Minotaur’s arms,
and takes me for a monster.
Let me see your nails, the man in uniform says,
shining light in my tear-streaked face.
My nails are trim, cut to the quick, to play guitar.
I was begging them not to arrest him.
Now I’m afraid they’ll take me instead.
In the end, they cart him away,
drop him off somewhere downtown.
I wake to find him on top of me.
He staggered home drunk,
unrepentant. The next day,
he says I head-butted him.
I gave myself
a black eye.
Buddha Eyes
The Buddha squats on my chest
of drawers, a lotus-knot of wood,
a thumb of peace, sucking light
from the shallows, his eyes
heavy-lidded, serene.
Holy incubus of the selfless,
idol of rigor mortis—blackout
curtains drawn on a theater
of suffering.
The tiger is on the prowl,
firewater-singed stripes.
The room tilts—
a vertigo of violence.
The guitar swings,
a snap of catgut.
He falls like a curtain.
Through the ringing,
he says, with a flare of pride,
I hit him like a man.
The wall bears witness,
a confession in red—
pale plaster mauled
by primitive finger-paint.
Blood braille for the blind.
I read the writing on the wall,
trace the prophecy that mirrors
the soot-press of my thumb—
blackened by the turnkey.
Buddha meditates on the void
while the wall bleeds—
as peace returns,
heavy, gold and deaf.
The Day or the Hour
The bridegroom waits,
invisible, dressed in
a tuxedo of shadows.
So patient, waiting for me
to ripen on the tree,
flicking his forked tongue
like a paintbrush
licking lead paint.
I feel ready to be plucked now.
I have grown weary
of this long engagement,
this séance of sweet nothings.
Your bride flirts with her cigarettes,
her sleeping pills and her whiskey.
The dwarves windex her glass coffin.
I could lie here dreaming for centuries,
while empires wither and fall
like stalks of grain.
I am so weary of waiting
for his arrival, not knowing
the day or the hour.
My lamp is sputtering out
and I drank my jar of oil.
He delays taking the vows,
that final commitment,
when all I crave
is their taking.
In the Great Below I will chew
on ruby pomegranate arils
until the juice runs
from my mouth like blood.
I will wear a crisp gown
of emerald grass and give birth
to all of nature. Wheat
will spring from the marrow
of my bones and I
will be home.
BIO: Rachel Christina McConnell holds an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University in the City of New York. Her work has been featured in The Smoking Poet, Dark Moon Lilith Press, Minerva Rising Press’s The Keeping Room, Swamp Ape Review, Haikuniverse, and Blood+Honey.