Shane Signorino

"I can resist anything but temptation." -Oscar Wilde

Static jazz muffles the raven's soft siren,
two writhing mammals draw back zebra shields
making a hotbed of melting flesh
where they once traded milk-grease and disease.

The sheets are smooth, the pillows cotton candy,
he lays down to dream, she to welcome gravity.
Succumbing to the pendulum swing of Morpheus,
he sprays chocolate fire and runs from snake girls.

She leaves.

Downstairs, she spreads herself on a star blanket
and lures God with a vengeful sway of the hips.
Quoting passages from By the River Piedra,
her denouncement of western divinity is complete.

When he awakes, she is singing mad eulogies
while choking on pieces of her shattered diadem.
A wreath of tears dangles under each diamond eye,
death leaves scatter over her celestial visage.

Her perfume taints the air and burns his liver,
a weakened condition caused by the hebona of lust.
Prowling her skin with lithe motions of the hand
he explores all marrings of her once prodigious vessel.

But what is touch without the dessert of taste?

Lying a narcotic kiss in the crest of her opulent lips,
he sews his will to the underbelly of covetous hell.
They study one another like vultures over gardens of carcass,
waiting for the moment to dive, swallow, and retreat.

The night ages with the frenzy of their sordid ritual,
onyx clouds evolve into pink tufts of Christmas angel hair.
The cutpurse of darkness finds her in a puddle of cold claret,
him catatonic and moist staring at the brittle laburnum

whispering, "are you feeling beautiful, are you feeling fine?"