Arsenic

A poem about the ghosts of women after they killed their husbands with arsenic.

All the pretty skeletons are dressed in Brussels Lace

Spilling birthday confetti from their spider cracked face.

 

Golden wheat ringlets framing hollow sockets.

Fleshless hands searching for poison vials in empty pockets.

 

Their fingers adorned in jewels, their throats adorned; hyperbole

They dip and curtsy, fanning their tattered dresses like royalty.

 

A matrimonial pest control with strychnine, and wallpapered cyanide.

 

But The Resurrection Men now leave empty-handed

For the corpora delicti are still moving, still commanded.

 

Their limbs aflutter with velocity, their bodies light, and swinging,

Their faces alight with melody, they dance around the fire singing:

 

“We bathe our bones in arsenic, we bathe our bones in tea

We wait to rest our marrow, beneath the Willow tree.”

Reviews

[Pete]

fine writing. i so enjoyed your words. made me think of the 'Witches of Eastwick'.