Fiametta, or, The Salamander: An Excursion To Get Raped, Envying Eva Braun

by Elizabeth Evangeline

    When you said you got hysterical I guess I didn't take it seriously. Or I thought: I can stick anything out for a few hours. A day. Now I hear you pulling down my shelves from three floors below I can hear you spoiling the milk with one finger. I can hear you letting the chickens out I can hear you putting cake all over yrself and leaving chocolate tracks. When you took out yr eye and rolled it around yr palm I got prickles like I walked in on Baba Yaga. You smear lipstick a long way across yr face to say yr born naturally born bad: when you were little you poured out yr apple juice. As a girl you never wore shirts. In the employ of the Grim Reaper you resuscitated people.
       You say yr selves peel away like a root vegetable and in the center is. You say. Walking down to the bus terminal dressed in a miniskirt and crop top red lips faking drunk messed up yr hair before you left the house poured wine down yr own back in New York an
I <3 NY shirt in California Cali Life, faking tourism. Turning corners you sing to yrself conspicuously. In the gas station seeking novelty items like fishnets a naked babe lighter those platform styrene shoes anything with tassels or a cork a PBR hat a beach cover-up neon pink a tall plastic cup with a built-in curly straw, blue. Do you believe in the Power Of Language or something? Cause yr apartment, three blocks away, holds something left long on your laptop desktop. Are you hoping it will speak after you? Do you secretly wish someone would look over the details like a lady scholar goes through the artifacts of Marilyn or Eva Braun--
       Loving her, wondering about her. How she collected feathers and seashells. How she asked several women and her doctor about the best food for golden retrievers. She fed Goldie corn-on-the-cob at the cookout last year, throwing it from the grill like a parade queen on her float like the sweeping arm of an applauded ice skater, royal, the promenade, opening night or a secret gesture to the faeries like an Olympic runner points skyward after every set of hurdles. Eva is told to have taken oils in her coffee red ribbons on her teddy bears deep thumbs under the shoulder blades for back massage. "For you, missus, we'll keep lipstick legal." Coral, fuchsia, carnation. For plane show tarmac, opening bugles of field day, sarongs in the city in the summer. Turning in the white bubble bath tub to expose wide hips rosehips crystal champagne gold scallops claw feet tall candles like sentries the palms high outside feather fingers of inside palms walking prints down her neck spine lumbar dimples backs of the thighs circling her little brown openings the pads of her feet like a fantastic tiger the full rags of moon blood stepped out of shorts left beside the cream teacup of soak. Her toes showing above the water. Stalks of lilac moving like cat tails or slow-swaying like coat tails. Clear-white stars rising from her open blouse to hover the on surface of the water outside the Gattlings the high moon rises ashes settling on the roof pink places where acid rain met the grain of the tin in a corrugated wave over the silo where we hid away to kiss each other ages thirteen and fourteen the cats walked overhead yr lighter fell out of yr pocket on the way here garnering curiosity from the local fauna it was orange and smelled like honey from being in yr pocket so close to yr pussy yr fingernails like light peppermint sticks candles would burn down this straw say the clove knobs of my eyes saying my pockets of broken lead all led to this. Shoe slipping off the shelf where I lay you down. Can see the books in yr open backpack one is calculus for school the other a thin white volume that's none of my business a pack of lilac gum saddle shoes to return home spotless to indicate you didn't stop off nowhere but indeed stayed late in the classroom with Norma Mary Joy Mary Lou and Colette four girls very concerned with anaerobic biology.