StarCat/CatStar

DON’T LOOK BACK
By Everett Warner
I set this tree on fire in the woods and her cigarettes flared up
and singed her lips, and all of her lovers’ lips scorched and all
of their smiles burned away to wide football grins, to these
wide Chelsea grins. I’d learn some bartenders lift out bottles
from these grins, from these holes where their mouths should
be. They just lean backwards and pull out a bottle like a
dagger. Then their ghosts follow her home from the bar and
their nails grow into long lines pulling her legs away and she
unravels, Eurydice, into a statue looking backward in fear, the
moon silvering the white slivers of their nails, red trailing
down the lines where she has become liquid and in the hands
that hold the nails is the bottle of her that they swallow with
their dislocated jaws to give to another spirit seeking spirit.
Her name echoes distant, bottled. But she is a stone, never to
find home--Eurydice. Her stretching smile is a finger stroking
a broken harp string or a knife unsheathing.
Author bio: Everett Warner is a recent graduate of Berry
College. He lives in Lilburn, Georgia and likes wolves. He can
be found @danielwolfer.