Ahja Fox: Two Poems

A Grave for Johanna

Moon spills from your eyes

Spiders back through the mouth 

I am the water

Flame mirror of ribs

Broomstick rides 

Nail straight through the head

You see it

Tonguing a rose

Spattered wings of sheets

Window streaking the sky

Yellow

Jane Doe: Epilogue 

I dreamed of my worst sin the night before—

I saw my mother and father cry,

I felt the mud slip into my mouth.

I remember how the ground weighed me in, 

how it expelled my chest cavity

like my neighbor’s dog Little MiMi,

flattened by the perfect tire. 

Do you know I predicted her passing? She

was just too street happy. A spazz for her size.

Mimi is powder now.

 

Like MiMi’s cookie box urn, my fate is sealed,

sealed by an abandoned 

Bic lighter, thin steel melted 

into creaseless blue paint.

I was just too shattered.

Too obsessed with death,

for my age. I surpassed my naive peers—

rainbow pills swirling in 

one half of a crystal ball—

blood splinter crosses and demons 

grasping at the hips of young girls.

Thirteen, trapped 

in a sibyl’s doom, reading my 

Bible, so I could “save” myself,

I’d rather have helped others like me,

or, be some happy young lady unobstructed.

Oh what a beautiful life I live—

The hell bait of my generation. 

I didn’t really care to die.