I know how I’ll dress when you’re gone
waist small as two fists
lips laquered black,
black as the pine
I’ll rap with my knuckles
to see you out, to see you
spun into cinders
on a loom at which Death toiled
with sympathetic fingers
turning dust
into gold
I know how I’ll stand
meeting the shifting
gaze of any who thought
I was a shadow
from a storybook
the fae over a cradle
rocking your boy
through his sin
but it wasn’t his finger
he pricked
now was it?
I know how I’ll stomach the sermons
when I could spit
through the eye of a needle
I’ll sit and I’ll smile
as they sing of God and speak
of a man none of you knew
and I’ll tap my foot
to the jig of their tears-
so few were there for me,
sweet Susan; you lied til
your tongue
turned black
I know what I’ll ask
when I stand above
overpriced wood and a face
frozen to the right degree
of falseness I’ll watch you
for a change when I invoke
their stories, for I don’t know
their names, but I know mine-
I wonder if you dream of us
or if we are
forgotten
I know how I’ll enter the wake
shaking rain from the brim
of my hat like salt, or smoke
I’ll drink to the pit of me
and eat as if your flesh was diced
on paper plates, and I’ll crow
“How have you been?
Do you know who I am?
Do you know, really, any of you,
and do you
care?”
I know what they’ll think of me
many eyes with rolling whites
lips tighter than a secret
God knows I’m used to that;
I’m unlearning two decades
of rabid darkness in a year
and it was you that bit me:
a russet werewolf felled by
something other than the bullet
I often wish
had been mine
I know I’ll piss at your graveside
can you stop me, spectre?
worm-flesh, crow-eaten tongue
bones played by the Devil?
how does it feel to be as if
seven years old and stranded
on a Welsh hillside far
from any who could see or care
and after that divided again
like the fork
of a river?
I know I’ve lived fiercely against you
Living loud off my bile, oh
delectable spite, I sup on the poison
from your wound and am glad of it
you gave me the arts, good powder
good women, and when I am done
my walk down will be on
carpet red of your blood and mine
and you’ll wish you’d been a better man
or you’d outlived me
but you won’t
I know I’ll still live when I’m dead
The Lady Ruthless 