Three Poems
HOLLYWOOD
Your word at dawn…
there was a guilty hunt… in your lugubrious past…
twitch twitch… like a rabbit…
death and destruction… I was a brilliant actress…
renowned for the lilt of my eyes…
hothouse orchids know the bonedry…
what a riot… seldom ever such a fringed hand…
young men… on the terrace in the moonlight…
second mistress… for the firing squad…
what did you see… in the spill of the ink… misery…
we didn’t have it… the radiant gas…
songbirds scattered… ornamentally the knot in my hair…
crack… it could be anyone… fermenting…
milk and tea leaves… I have something to say to you…
in a trance-state… orange and red…
that was a day for victors… I didn’t care…
heavy scent… heavy… resplendent…
tomorrow another… dank interior… your tactical vehicle…
FANTASY VALLEY
Running… through sharp brambles and talons…
obliquely… I swallowed gallons of sea water…
he said if I’d only bleach my asshole… then we’d really be…
ooh… a little something lascivious…
a martyr for the girls girls girls… sir… I know fairies…
as coy as oysters… sorrowful maidens… a tear-filled lagoon…
my nightgown so fatal… like picking a scab…
my nightingale so feral… a scratch-off redeemed…
we were uncertain… of how to make it last… silver…
I just thought you looked so beautiful…
there were mermaids… wingspans lined with glued-on feathers…
dangerous… was it the pink salt… the acids…
I have done nothing original… I stared at the mirror…
last April… ballroom plumed… for mating season…
there could be kissing… stars I threw rocks at…
not anymore sir… I left my secret…
in your backseat… lip gloss spilling… scales…
pulled-out… rust-stained… a little something… vicious…
HOUSE ON THE FROZEN LAKE
I was widely considered a young woman of virile appetite…
the charitable practice… of licking top lip…
pleasure… carrying me in your big strong arms…
decomposition… didn’t you know…
blossoming peach with its throat slit… lubricious…
diamonds… and other bovine delicacies…
I believed wholeheartedly in pasteurization…
crucible… nocturnal emission… always something…
something glowing… just outside your bedroom window…
seditious pinkness… hid my cheeks behind my fan…
beautiful… to sacrifice the naked children…
rot… white-powdered… something… atomic…
a birthday cake… for all the officers… always something…
something pulsing… just far enough away that…
slip a sleep mask… untie the silk bow of my robe…
smelling… spoiled… elegant… in her enucleation…
I appeared frequently in the pages for my parties…
sows and nannies… a fetid trough… the pure blank snow….
∩
Madeleine Scott is a doctoral student at Harvard working on gender, psychoanalysis, and the history of Christianity.