Now write about yourself. Not witches. Not

lust, but “i” – the gauntest part of myself.

Now write about your childhood – that distraught

grimoire, “vulval witch lore,” lost on the shelf.

Which lore? Exactly. “Witches gummed gristle”?

But of course! “Make a crone moan while sucking

her bone”? Bad rhyme. It must rhyme with “vulval.”

Offal? No. “Something-something … we’re kissing.”

La bruja me agarra,/ me lleva a su casa,/ me sienta en su regazo/ y me besa.

The witch grabs me,/ takes me to her house,/ sits me on her lap/ and kisses me.

Yes! You got it. The clap, I mean … the Witch

Clap. No! You said this would be in good taste.

¡Ay! dígame, dígame/ dígame usted/ ¿cuántas criaturitas/ se ha chupado usted?

Oh! Tell me, tell me,/ Tell me,/ how many babes have you drained the life from?

Cannibal humor slays me. It’s a niche

duffer; like porn for the boring and chaste.

Or this strange folk song you keep quoting from.

Ninguna, ninguna/ ninguna no sé,/ ando en pretenciones/ de chuparme a usted.

None, none,/ none, I don’t know/ but I’m planning to drain you next.

Drain who? You: kid. Me: booty witch like bomb.

Notes.

It’s a sonnet getting interrupted by a folk song. That’s the problem with short term memory loss, I keep forgetting what I wanted to write about. I’m thinking about my childhood and my broken home on the range and suddenly I find this Mexican folk song, “La Bruja,” which apparently was one of Frida Kahlo’s favorites and now I’m trying to work it in as if it’ll magically fit in 14-lines of poetry.

The new Agent Orange: dropping song fragments into crap verse from very far away just to watch it burn.