by Winjilles Thringe

The City’s hooking heart

Pump us through its hot corpse.

Our souls feed its dark breath,

Bodies glut its engines.

Where did you hide my shine?

Find me on Teshill Slope,

Girl, weave through the steel blades

Scribing bright words of death

In halflight hate and laughs.

Can’t you forget your name?

Love spits itself at me,

Fouls my hope, dulls my eye,

Mocks me. It could flay me

With my own lightning blade.

Oh, please, wear my hot skin?

Find me on Teshill Slope

Selling virgin hopes, cheap,

To hot-cod City men

Reborn with ten long thrusts

Into me. Where are you?

Brains feed like red insects

Gorged with blood of meaning,

And burst against stone walls.

The vines and rodents feast

On hope’s tissues. Why not?

Find me on Teshill Slope,

Among the slick bodied

Boys, my hard tits pressed flat

For quick sale. For you I’ll

Come unbound. Tell me, why?

Ashes cleaned from the wall

Take my name down gutters

Drop my hope down the shafts

Where beetles shake black wings.

What did my songs become?

Find me on Teshill Slope,

Play me like your jitar,

Cross my strings, make me buzz

Anjive words like sweet death:

Innerspace fantasy?

City stone drooling down

Shafts into blackshit pools,

Heaving up filthy life

Splashes of quicksilver.

Is this where I find you?