reflections on weekly fictions on sundays

gremlins we call

ourselves, crouching in mass

grave grass, first

we lounge, smoking to disappoint

the others camped in sun

near—then—

watch passersby, watch the pump,

smack, miss, run

of the clustered half-naked

sports—then—

we flip pages, respective

novels of plague, knights, angels,

eco-speculation, swamp set

mock fairytales,

fiction intwined so deeply

in moments such as:

dirty dirty shirleys crowded

about sticky tables, hell

breaking

loose, rifts opening blood

red fire splicing clear night

sky, eve of the full moon—

such as:

small square stoop steps

gather the red candles,

light in the cauldron

we do not let the flame hush

as we summon lover girls

as we summon the good man

below, goat legs and all dripping

with fiendish desire written

in a crude pentagram, our ink stubbed

cigarette ash, laughing, laughing, laughing,

believing, believing, believing,

we summon the newest iteration

 of ourselves: our names

craved by others’ lips to be

spoken spells, and when

the summoning ends, mirrors

reflect women, the women

our adolescence never quite knew

would come true, such as:

the fictitious dream of living

a hop, a skip across

a two-lane road from the best

friend, neighbors, we’re neighbors, we repeat

this because romanticism

has felt impossible with impossible

men, because romantic blood

flows hearty only in summoning

girlhood, violent carnage

summer is wrought with

girlhood sentiments, endless power,

we bloom like soft

blossoms on our tree-lined street:

drawing on the devil, looking

to the moon’s wise expression,

bodying fiction manifest.