I got drunk at the DMV with John Berryman, and we toasted to unkempt memory until the police threw us out on the murky street and the rats laughed. The only license I have now is license to kill. Houseflies mostly. I printed the certificate myself. Beneath a red umbrella, a demon watches us enviously – able to enjoy others carousing but never able to carouse himself. Berryman looks at me with a poem in his eyes and my mind records the wine dark music of his shredded sanity against the petrified blue screaming of my own.

Silky pink wishes dab blush on my cheeks. Prettiness ages like fine wine. I cannot drink. Water clasps my throat like a necklace, and I remember running on the beach in nothing but my frightened girlhood and a few inches of fabric I called a bikini, darting like daylight away from the dark and desolate vultures who stalked me. In my mind, that girl strolls now. The sea takes a little over her as she lolls by the ravenous shore, but the vultures fear her and keep their distance. Layered in comfort and rest, she holds a pink parasol to keep the aging at a steady rate.

Excellent tornadoes rip through this city of ruby blood and ivory bone. With precision, they cut down every den of vice including mine. The ravens used to visit me daily, bringing their gifts of scrap metal and creepy stories. The city is toxic now, like a lover that beats you and you stay because there is nowhere else for you to inhabit. The world is inhospitable and layered with the soot of all the good things the people have burned. The ravens do not come – choosing to eat the popcorn God throws for them as they watch Gomorrah burn.