Susan Slaviero
Police Procedural
The truth is, we already know the wolf
The bone fragments & silk stockings, trace evidence, a dead giveaway. We know how he
fingered her mouth, her eyelids. How he waved away the bees clustered around her ear. The
forensic narrative reveals itself in smears & spatters, unraveling in blue lamplight. It’s not about
who, but how. Sugar-gorged, corrupted minds & teeth. This is the body, the wire. Fatal, we say.
Morbid. The warrant asks for a stain in the shape of a smashed finch.
Everything is coffee-colored. Recognize the signature? The peat moss. The auburn braid, a ligature.
We’re going to tell you something about motive. It doesn’t matter. We’re
interested in the method, the way the cuts have feathered edges, that slight twist of the neck. Find
the girls. The almost-dead ones, their hair thinning as we speak. It’s a matter of urgency. We tell
this to the hounds because no one else is listening.
The Feral Diaries VIII
The Cursed Union
I am not what you expected—dragonbird, your consort, a woman irrevocably changed by fevers, charmed water, by
the kisses of monsters. I am a black dress that shatters into a
maelstrom, a squall of ravens. You disbelieve what you’ve seen.
Say a prayer, tap that knife of glass over a dry jawbone and say blackwing, badwing. Once you
marked the place where we met on the map with a bloodied heart. Can you ink away all we’ve
done? Remember the deadwalk, the banquet of mice and rabbits? You woke up with a limp frog
clamped between your teeth. There remains something of us in the wicked forest. Together, we
bury our obsidian eggs in a damp shallow and mutter an oath over the disturbed grounds. I call
you a faithless scorpion and still, you forget me.
Feral Diaries IX
{saving the devil woman}
Always, I dream of going back. Bramble and thorn. That place I was before you came. The solstice
lingers, a dark eye. The flavor of dirt and yeast on your tongue, that slight tang of cigarette. [ pretty
little lady ] Almond cakes. Poison rooms. The microbial air. Molasses and raw liquor, an inhalation
of something gone wrong. All I can see is tarot decks and mustaches, tumblers of ice and wine. The
curl of smoke from the corner of a man’s mouth. We’ll talk about this later. Now I want to scrub
your Rosetta stone with lye and take you back to a place without language. You’re going to thank
me, lay broken shells at my feet. Why tell me these stories of snakes and trees and unripe fruit?
Oh! I could rupture your meatpalm with a well-placed squeeze. I am more Python than red,
red apple, I promise you.
Notes on the Affair of the Poisons
Again, we must revisit the necessity of foretasters. Call it a sexapple, an aphrodisiac, but
really those might be grains of powdered toad speckled around the stem. The skin splits in the
shape of an asp and you call it divination. Be certain of your surroundings, lest your heels become
rooted in poison waters.
Delirium. Coma. The whitening of fingernails. Gifts sent to the house of the dying. These loaves of
bread are greasy, resinous.
The woman, a study in ruby sulfur; lock her away or she’ll dissolve in sunlight. Sixteen pints
of water will cure her, or burst her bladder. What happens to our witches stays in the chambre
ardente. You say she made you a promise in the form of inheritance powder. Later, you rock
yourself to sleep thinking of black tongues and wasted limbs, all the layers of skin beneath her
peeled dress.
The petrified bones of infants buried between the rows of radishes
Paint her portrait as a silhouette clutched in the talons of a winged devil. The weight of an
ampoule in your hand.
Mercury, antimony, lead. In this you have been complicit.
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Susan Slaviero is the author of CYBORGIA (Mayapple Press). Recent chapbooks include Selections from the Murder Book (Tree Light Books), A Wicked Apple (Hyacinth Girl Press), and Apocrypha (Dancing Girl Press). She has a BA in English/Writing from Lewis University.