In the candle's warmth he tried
One last night
To write
In the cautious twilight he tried,
He tried,
But mostly he remembered
His Mary

In ghosts of longlost loves
She lived,
In stars beyond the
Broken pier,
In the feathery thoughts
Of not quite rain,
In the mist over pilings
Imbedded in deathly depths,
Tonight she eased his pain
But nothing
Filled her space,

This night was
Theirs alone
This satin flesh of neck
These hands to touch
Sacred corners of hearts
These eyes to still the fears,
This heat the umbrella
To pull forth dreams
And kiss dark hours,

He remembered his Mary
The angels' Mary now
Dancing the distant stage embraced
Past the edge of dread
Beyond the labors of nocturnal love
Far from days of formless beings
Bathed in youth,

Tonight it all belonged to him
In the whispering smoke
Of the silent room
Where dreams linger
This night,

This last night
Where shadows no longer dance
Madly on walls not
Like once—
Not like that summer
He spent loving Mary
That summer she spent

Loving him

The old woman hatched a plan.
She left the adult day-care center one afternoon
putting my mentally disabled friend in the cab with her.
I'll show you my townhouse, she said
cucumber sandwiches, cookies, tea,
it'll be lovely.
But as soon as she shut the door to her place
she was on his jock.
He was shocked
to find this sweet old broad
palpating his dingus through his Chinos
at three in the afternoon.
It had been so long for him
and her—
this lady was a jackal
gumming the carcass of his bones
And the suddenness of it beat back his desire;
he couldn't coax the worm to attention.

He smiled, dead inside now.
She made tea
a placid brew.

He took a taxi home.

The next day he marched to Walgreen's
for Viagra
there'd be a fire next time,
goddammit.
He waited for another invitation
and waited and waited.
She could take advantage of him properly now
if only she'd ask.
But that was that
and three months later
his erotic abductor
was ambushed herself
put into a nursing home in Bridgeton.

This time on the table
is a time of pain and blood.
Alone, each woman splits in two.
The final souls
force themselves into existence:
for despite the trumpets
sounding out the warnings
of the final hours,
they yearn for bodies.
Watching with grinning, greedy eyes,
still believing that they will triumph,
the demons stand quietly.
Visions of the sufferings
appear in the mothers' minds:
three battles rage on shore
as volcanoes spill
into the poisoned seas;
skeleton beings stand hopeless
on the starving earth.
Torture of the body
intermingled with torment of the spirit
resonate in the shrieks of the pregnant seers
as they view the degradation
of their sinless, sin-filled progeny.
Thus, in a ceremony of fire and brimstone,
they seethingly bring forth children
into a burning world.