EMMA BUCKLEY

content warning: death

Ophelia Drowns in A Motel Pool

---

and Hamlet is chain-smoking in the church just off the highway, 
his ash-stained fingers digging grooves into the church pews 
            while Claudius gets on his knees to pray, usurper mouth making the shapes 
            of the one song he remembers from the gospel radio station,
            ‘cause he’s forgotten all his Hail Marys now, can’t look God in the face. 

Polonius drinks himself to death behind a curtain, gets so close to oblivion 
before his guts are ripped out of him and the last girl left on the cleaning staff quits her job, 
            takes up acting in a theatre troupe, gets kind of good, 
            gets used to dying onstage, hands perpetually corn-syrup stained & a reminder 
            of all that blood beneath the window, that never washed out.

The Motel Elsinore is humming with flies and the electric zappers left out to kill them,
and sometimes, in the dim-bulb half-light, the neon signs all flicker and dim, 
            & the parking-lot ghost begins his haunt, buzzing like television static,
            glowing ghostly blue and – father, I, I, I – faintly see-through.
            You can see the agave & cacti & run-down old four-wheelers, even looking right at him.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern aren’t dead yet. They’re dropping acid in the motel lobby, 
talking so sharp in so many tongues that their bar-room kisses start to feel like sword-fighting

            & with that fifty-dollar high they’re falling up, up, up into the ceiling, 
            where the rats are burrowing, where the surveillance cameras will catch Horatio
            scurrying through the jazz bar to stop a shot of poison reaching his beloved boy’s heart.

And Ophelia’s ready to drown, going down like the final beat of a chorus. 
The final gunshot aimed at Claudius sends crows shrieking, wheeling in the air, 
            & the drowning girl is forgotten now. Cigarette ash curling in her hair.
            The neon lights spilling across the illuminated pool, an acid trip of colours,
            like spilled blood on a stage. Like a garden of wildflowers.

Her naked back slaps the surface of the pool, 

                        the sound of applause.

A Sestina for Doomsday in Tallahassee

---

I. Angels tumbled from the sky like torn tissue-paper on the day the world died. 
We sat on the cliffside, makin’ wishes on ‘em, looked like blown daisies in the black sky.
Cross-legged in the back of your pick-up, you asked if god’s angels were actin’ like a pick-up service,
a mess of flesh and feathers to deliver us up top, all bundled up like a bouquet of wildflowers. 
Your radio hummed a cracklin’ swan-song. The last reporter on the air cried DOOMSDAY. 
Whole city’s gettin’ raptured now. We watch the sky blacken like a bruise & hope it won’t hurt.

II. All kind of went to hell after that. Not everyone got to heaven & the local pastor was a little hurt,
started gunnin’ down the angels in the streets. His mouth full of ichor & feathers when he died. 
Angels actin’ like shrikes to crickets now, swords of fire down the throats screamin’ DOOMSDAY. 
We drove past the 7-11 where an angel crash-landed like a UFO, leavin’ one less star in the sky.
Salvaged some things. Bandages, canned peaches, bundle of string to tie you up some wildflowers.
God hasn’t noticed the two of us just yet. ‘Least with you, for now, I can be of some service.

III. Remember me and you before all this? The playground fights, fidgetin’ at Sunday service?
Mouths stained with cherry soda & my knuckles red to match, swearin’ up and down it didn’t hurt. 
Before we drove out to the rust-rot of city streets, pollen-stained dungarees, kickin’ up wildflowers. 
I ask these things to an empty car seat. Gets mighty lonely ‘round here since you died. 
Not too many people around now, most of ‘em heaven-bound, not too many stars left up in the sky.
Gets awful dark at night. And the ones left behind are standin’ on the streets yellin’ DOOMSDAY.

IV. Startin’ to settle down around here now. Not much to do when you’ve gotten through doomsday.
Saw an angel dingin’ the bell on a corner-store counter, waitin’ for service. 
Halo-shaped head glowin’ like a thousand neon shop signs, eyes blind as an overcast mornin’ sky.
Every other feather holdin’ a hundred glowin’ eyes. If you stare too long, it starts to hurt.
She held on tight to her bottle of whiskey, told me SORRY ‘BOUT ALL THIS. SORRY SHE DIED. 
Had a dream that night where I couldn’t beg for heaven ‘cus my mouth was stuffed with wildflowers.

V.  Earth’s been scorched to ruin since the angels came. Forests crushed like a handful o’ wildflowers.
Blood rain fillin’ up the gutters, four horsemen holdin’ up traffic on the interstate. It ain’t doomsday.
That day came and passed when that angel held your throat with its hand of god & you left me, died,
your soul shruggin’ out of your body like it was a suit worn once and taken back to the rental service. 
Went back to see my parents but they’re packed up and gone, left nothin’ but a wooden cross. It hurt.
It fuckin’ hurt to have nothin’ left, watchin’ god’s divine messengers burn the lights outta the sky.

VI.  Fell in love with an angel today. Her hands feel hotter than starin’ at a bright summer sky.
She’s got six arms bound by flesh as white and hard as porcelain, all wound up with wildflowers. 
MAYBE GOD FORGOT YOU, she said, BUT I’LL STAY WITH YOU. WON’T EVEN HURT.
WELL, PROBABLY. Her laugh sounds like every church bell that rung out on doomsday.
When she kneels for me, I feel the devotion of every prayer for forgiveness at every church service.
And the first time she shaped those hundred mouths around my name – hell, I goddamn nearly died.  

VII.  Ain’t much left here after doomsday, since the last angel crashed outta the sky.
Hope it didn’t hurt when they took you from me. I promise, angel, I’ll visit you when I’ve died.
For now, I’ve got my girl, bound up in wildflowers, eyes glazed as pearls, right here at my service.

< Prev       Next >
Back to ISSUE 06