Kailey Tedesco
The Most Beautiful Suicide
I wasn’t there, but the sight of her is ice on my face ––
She might have dressed at the mirror,
rouge and snood-haired for the event.
The city probably looked of stalagmites,
the lights, dew-ooze from windows.
A limousine arrived as if to say
you, having conquered the Nylon
Wars, deserve to die in style.
She had imagined herself chewed up
and brined with asphalt. Indistinguishable
from plastic bags coated with rain-slime.
Instead, the body of the car became
a lake, and Evelyn a dreamy swimmer
floating past with clothes on.
The world still ripples
from her fizzled shout.
GirlStuff.com
It can navigate eggs and everything after.
You think you’re the creator, but
its slippered feet know how to use
the moon as their compass when the time
comes.
The make-up is more than sugar
and spice – it’s the apparition of feather
boas lost in bottom drawers. Clear as UFO’s
smiling across the meniscus of your eye.
It’s X marks the birth spot. You can and
will tear its rag-doll seams, but beware
onslaught of beads hosing out and over
like a magician pulling scarves from
sleeves.
It’s you. It’s me. It’s the fan that blows
her hair back in your dreams.
I Hope Death will Come This Way
It is time —
Look to the coughing ocean
in the night and know that
in it, I can feel my breath.
Find me wrapped in brine plastic
on the morning news. The
blood of butterflies won’t
redden my cocoon.
There is nothing lachrymose
as the moon bears down on me alone.
With the braille of body illuminated,
I will take my final bow.
Listen to the water’s crests
applauding my epilogue.
The Purgatory Choice
In the mud-angel beneath my body’s
last defenses lies Her contract. I can feel it
roll over me like galaxies.
This is all I feel right now.
I can sense the give of my elbows, and
know to fear this the way I fear
jump-scare films.
Her wants a signature to move forward
in the process ––
Enter into my mother
absorption: feel and see nothing more
Think of it as a perpetual snow day: Facts of Life
re-runs and the promise of warmth to come.
I say yes.