'Old Salem' & 'Bargain': Two Poems by December Lace

OLD SALEM

While riding in the night, I’d whisper to the sky

above the stone-studded ground

where your lifeless body rests–

me a wilted lily reflecting the moonlight,

my torso draped over the thin broomstick, chest caved in,

forever aloft, mourning over your long-buried coffin.

Away from the words and enchantments

I could’ve said to you,

my magic to keep you safe

from the curtain of death that separates us.

There you decay, and here I stay.

Your lips are sealed forever, my love–

your body entombed in a wooden box

beneath hallowed ground

where a woman like me is banished from

and not even my tears are welcome.

---

BARGAIN

The withering woman glued to her hand-made chair

sits and cackles in lunacy and firelight radiance

while the crow suckles capillary blood from her teat.

She can’t believe her good fortune, amassed in this

graveyard cottage built in Spring, dire winds creeping in,

the uninvited guests of Autumn.

Surrounded in rotten corn, woods so isolated

no tribe could hear her call.

The crow feasts as she laughs until high midnight, her

name still dripping wet in ink, the parchment upwards,

open pulpit to an ancient book,

an empty silver cup waiting

just behind a bloody shift, the course fabric

saturated in unclean milk

while she laughs

so hard tears roll down her hysterical face.

Her hands clutching what she thinks is a baby,

the Goat laughing too

---

December Lace is a former professional wrestler and pinup model from Chicago. She is a Best of the Net nominee and has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Pro Wrestling Illustrated, The Molotov Cocktail, Pussy Magic Lit, The Cabinet of Heed, Vamp Cat, Twist in Time, Dark Marrow and Rhythm & Bones YANYR Anthology, among others as well as the forthcoming Coffin Bell. She loves Batman, burlesque, cats, and horror movies. She can be found on Twitter: @TheMissDecember, or http://decemberlace.blogspot.com.