There are some ghosts you should never love. Not

that they want your love or that you interest
them, not you; in life they loved their gunshot,
stabbings, those odd marks we find, sinister
proof of some alien design. In life

peasants would cross themselves when they saw her.

They called her La Quintrala: butcher-wife
of old Chile. Even death could not slow
her down. I slept with her once, big mistake.

She was still calling a blowjob, “deathblow,”
and it was. She said, “I’ll make your heart break,”

and she did. “I only fuck you because
you are damned, like me,” she said, and I was.