The Dead Girls Speak in Unison
by Danielle Pafunda
We’ll tell you
what a corpse is.
It’s a girl
with her shoes
on backward.
It’s a double-
jointed girl.
It’s a glass eye
in a glass jar
in the snapped jaw
of an alligator
girl.
It’s a doll
whose eyes move
of their own accord
when you turn
just so.
It’s a busted
septum
through which
the worm
can thread
her lonely
troubles.
Her lover
done gone.
*
If you’re looking for something pretty
nestled in the fold
of this leprous bosom,
come closer. Snap, snap.
We loved craftily.
We infected ourselves,
and tranq’d ourselves,
and drank ourselves
silly and sang:
Oh!
What a dumb-dumb-
ugly-duck,
a useless piece
of ugly meat.
Then, in the dark,
beneath the musty
woolens, bunched,
snuggled and fed
a slinky heaven.
And now?
And now?
Nothing soft
slinks our way
that isn’t wet
with what you’d call
carrion,
currency.
Originally published at www.kenyonreview.org.
