What should we be tonight?
You’re a blackbird, I’m a queen
I’m a handful of berries
and you’re the hand
kneading slick skin clusters
until I’m just shy of bursting
caviar blood that stains
your palms for days.
Lead me through backstreets
through boy’s town
and the curious triumph
of good music and better pills.
And if we find a doorbell?
Ring it. You grab my hand in the dark room,
hand me a bottle. What is it? I ask.
Don’t worry, just drink.
Under the bridge
you take your wings out
soft and jet
like a velvet painting.
What should we be tonight?
I’m a queen and you’re a bird,
I’m pyracantha and you’re caught
in my fruit-laced thorns
where you feast for hours
until your teeth ache with sugar
and I’m covered with feathers
and you’re out of your head—
broken glass, first blood—
flying frantically
in circles like a blackbird
caught in the attic.
Sarah Bokich is a poet and marketing strategist. Her work has appeared in Pacifica Literary Review, Cloudbank, Timberline Review, and others, and her chapbook “Rocking Chair at the End of the World” was published in 2017 by Finishing Line Press. She lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.
