Brown Recluse to Black Widow
Never fret, my darling;
Never fear, my dear:
If I had meant to murder you
You wouldn’t still be here—
But I prefer the gentler sort
Of crime, soft as a breath—
Embracing you with all eight arms,
While kissing you to death.
The streetlights at both corners had already burnt out in a sputter of brownout-fueled sparks when Beasley rolled up the road in Ren Hufnagel’s low-slung station wagon. The neon over Beasley’s jewelry store refused to die as quickly, though, flickering back on faintly, flicking off again with a buzz, and opening its weary eye for one more second to guide him to the parking strip before it winked out at last. The car, a 1978 monster of decrepit steel, crunched onto the gravel and died there, too, with a hoarse cough.
Beasley, the second-to-last living inhabitant of the state as far as he knew, had carjacked Hufnagel for the last liter of his fuel to get to his store and rescue the paltry inventory. It hadn’t occurred to Beasley that there was nobody else left to steal the jewelry, let alone buy or barter anything for it. Standing there on the weedy parking strip, he did finally think that perhaps overpowering his victim by shattering Ren’s last bottle of whiskey over his skull might not have been the most brilliant move, either. That maneuver probably meant that there was only one survivor now, and it definitely left the remaining one thirstier than ever. Willard Beasley sat down there in the dust and waited for more of nothing to happen, and that was the end of the beginning.
Storied
The house on the lake, awake, asleep,
Has legends to tell, and secrets, keep,
Of seasons fled and of lives gone by,
In whispers, hushed, like the distant cry
Of an owl that’s flown on her muffled wing—
The house on the lake holds everything
Behind closed shutters and boarded doors,
As tightly as novels protect their stores
Of stories—the ghosts of bygone make
The pages turn in the house on the lake.
Discoverer Discovered
Should a biologist be lost
in untracked wilderness, the cost
might be more palatable when
she found a beast that other men
and women hadn’t seen before:
she’d get the credit, and what’s more,
it would be named for her as well,
should she record her findings. Swell
as documenting her great find
in journals she would leave behind,
posterity could also learn
another feature that, in turn,
she mightn’t think the creature’s worst,
considering she’d met it first—
had any notes so ably writ
been found; they’d been consumed by it.
The pages must’ve tasted great,
were they all that the creature ate,
but after her, they were dessert.
Hope getting eaten didn’t hurt.
World-Weary, or Geologically Tired…
If you wake me at an hour too far ante-meridian,
I’m sorry, but my heart is dark and harder than obsidian—
But if you keep me up too late and sleepless in the night,
It’s just as likely I will have a heart of anthracite.
…I’m perfectly able to make a mess out of things all by myself!
I’m an overachiever. When I’m not faced with excessive reality, anyway.
Art-Colored Glasses 