Axe Oil. by Jennifer Anne Champion

SHE might have kept it there. Not that I checked. / Not that she definitely put it there. / But in retrospect, I must have learnt from somewhere / how a proper woman keeps bottle close to heart. // Neckline and neuralgia would compound by noon. / The swoon of eucalyptus oil applied to temple, / circular motions fingers, and the quiet lingering slap/of sound on skin, defying mis-understanding.
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leaving
the conver
-sation
won't
fail all
those
monday
feels

Laughter from someone else’s good time climbs my window,
collapsing neater than a bridge of shuffling cards.

Back then I was a doe staring down the chasm of a gun
while waves of doubt broke on sharp edges in my mind.

Now I know only an Anubis could call me Ammut,
feed bleeding hearts to the demon daughter of Isis.

Get your fists up
he says,
weaving and
spreading arms
breath hot
and face wet
and so this is it
this is what a bar fight
is like?

Today all this blue is wild and the urban coyote—
the blood moon, songs sung to infants, all digital

media, even the sound of a train far off
either distant or in memory, are wild

as untaxed capital gains, beyond our commodified
speech, wild as the joker and the suicide king,

riotous and nocturnal, innocently corybantic.