for Sarah

Her voice when she sings is a roomful of cigarette smoke.
A heist gone bad afterwards.
Danger like blood spreading through a pool of water.

A voice ripe with money, but tainted, but bloody.
Freighted with hundreds of years of atrocities.
Abel crying from the earth, bearing witness.

A film flickers on the brick wall behind her.
Tight framing on a terrified face, eyes wide and watery, mouth open but silent.
Her voice beats against the wall and out again.

As she sings seeds split open, curl away from themselves.
Paper straw wrappers unkink from the water.
Black snakes grow up through the pavement, reeking of charcoal.

Next to her a drummer beats on a tin drum.
Small and homely like children are small and homely.
His hands pungent with onions, mouth musty with woodruff.

Every sharp rap plays out in her fingers.
Angry desperation of tears after the war.
Sharp knives against onions, tears and sex, sex and tears.

There’s a derringer holstered behind her guitar.
Sweet promise of violence tucked into her ribcage.
Single cartridge thumping in time to her music.

Under her feet three pedals:
Two for the music,
One for the bomb strapped to her back.

Though the night was clouded the light of the moon came in at the window.
Janet couldn’t sleep.
Just as she’d start to nod off, every muscle in her body would close up.
When the red numbers on her alarm clock burned 3:15 she gave up and went to get a glass of water.
The air and the hard wood of the floor were chilly.
The small, spiteful heads of the floor nails bit at her soles.

The moon was full and very low in the sky, underneath the clouds.
She sat in the close arc of the dormer window and stared across at it.
The mouth of the moon was pursed, as though to ask a question.

The freeway ran obliquely away three blocks to the north.
At three in the morning it was deserted.
She’d never seen it so empty.
She shivered and hugged herself.
“It’s so lonely,” she told the moon. “Everyone’s gone and left me behind.”

The floor creaked behind her.
Blue copper moonlight washed across her back and out the dormer window.
Strong fingers curled into her hair, tipped her head back until her throat was long and smooth.

Every muscle in her body closed up, like a fist.

There was a boy whose brother did nothing with his life except die.
His brother was very young when he died, so that all anyone knew about him was that he had died.
Did he have a personality?
Likes?
Dislikes?
No one knew.

After he was dead, his parents brought home a cat, a gray-faced, foul tempered kitten.
They gave the cat the name of his brother.
They treated the cat just like the would have treated his brother, had he lived.
His brother had a place at the table, though he never used silverware.
His brother shared a room with him, though he never slept under the covers.
When he started going to school, his brother went along with him.
“You’ll have to leave your cat outside,” said the teacher.
“He’s not a cat, he’s our son,” explained his parents.

When they got older, other boys would pick on him because of his brother.
“Where’s your brother now,” they’d say. “Yaaaah.”
His brother was in a different class so he didn’t know.
One day he came home crying with a bloody nose.
He told his brother what had happened, because he couldn’t tell his parents.
The next day his brother was waiting for him outside of the school.
When the other boys started to hit him, his brother was on them like a flash.
Snap! Snap! Snap!
His brother gobbled them down, then settled down to wash his whiskers clean.

Lisa Renahn finds a baby in a dumpster.
It’s still alive, which surprises her.
And surprisingly healthy!
“I’m going to name you Lisa Renahn,” she tells it.
It’s her favorite name.
The baby just screams and kicks fat legs at her.
“Shut up, what do you know?” she scolds.

Anyway, she takes the baby, Lisa Renahn does.
“You’re the Christ,” she tells it.
The baby wails and looks cross.
“The Christ doesn’t need food!”
But she feels kind of bad so she feeds it iceberg lettuce and watermelon.
Which doesn’t please Lisa Renahn but she can’t complain, she’s a baby.

Out of sheer desperation Lisa Renahn learns how to transmutate things.
Shazam!
In her mouth, lettuce becomes milk.
Watermelon becomes wine, though, which causes problems.
Drunk, she gets belligerent.
Which doesn’t bode well for Lisa Renahn.
“I pulled you out of the dumpster,” she complains.
Shazam!
Lisa Renahn is made out of bread.
She complains, but only crumbs come out.