vanity

mirror, mirror, on the wall

shiny hand on bloodied wall

eyesockets carved in, disemboweled clean. two

pink buttons sewn in their place,

wrists slathered with black tar.

portrait of older women, glistening in flames

your ancestry gave you skin, turned

into quilt, a landfill of trinkets, perfectly pink

who’s the fairest of them all?

if not the girls you hated most.

mouthful of hairpins coated gold

a tongue knitted half-shut, twisting consonants.

back in your homeland, soil not yet scorched,

sinners died for angels, in the

hailstorm last summer, pink

hand of a corpse on shiny mirror.

thou, o queen, art the fairest in the land

silver ring clutched to bonfire smoke.

queen of masquerades, poker card rolled

into smoking joints: the royal flush of twenties

half-smeared cosmetics on a tongueless

placenta, worn with crushed lollipop bits

golden like the West Coast’s afternoon sun

bleeding cavities only on one-half.

snow white, o queen, is the fairest of them all

eyelids sewn shut with a vintage thistle and

blonde hair dyed black as thread,

later at night you cough up pink buttons

and leave them between your bruised lips

as plastic dentures. organs wrung from

body, nailbeds sealed shut with cement,

portrait of burning women–combust.