Flossie’s Reply

by Astrid Ho Yan Liu

 

                    Golden Shovel after William Carlos Williams

 

 

you leave me simpering notes and

know you must whet the appetite you have. 

her juices are not the first you’ve eaten

- or the last, you delight so in the 

way we bruise and rot: as plums

bursting with nascent red pulp that 

drips amethyst down your chin. were 

my dreary small fists in

your marriage bed not enough to satiate? the 

creeping fear i’ve crystallized, an icebox-

inevitable fate of this girl and 

the next. dearest, tell me. which

patients’ stomach pits at the sight of you 

suave and knowing as you are (as you were)

though i plead i know there is probably

no slim chance of saving

a sliver of these slim girls - for

you feast on green naivete as breakfast.

i pray they escape before they learn to Forgive 

you. pray they’ll escape before they become me-

i cannot hold you off. as you say, they 

were 

delicious

so 

sweet

and 

our cores they grow numb and so 

cold

 

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