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.
