The Marbled Sigh

Stranger

I woke up thinking I’d write a roofie poem
I’d had some dream about going into some bushes or maybe
Being found in them
I spent another hour looking at the epstein files instead
I cleaned shit off the carpet instead
While the dog cowered
She’s really good at feeling shame
At least she feels shame my friends and I
Say

I woke up thinking I’d write an ex poem
I’d gotten another text from him in my sleep
I guess I could write about the time he drove my car scouring the streets
Looking for me
Headlights peeling across walls of buildings
Brick wood brick wood brick brick
What was that?

My body
Crumpled in a brick divot

I started to arrive on the scene a while later
My roommate had wrapped my body in her bathrobe
My roommate was trying to put pepto bismol inside
My body
It’s much easier to get roofie into it
Whiskey has that irresistable amber shine
Pepto is a pink that can only repel

I started to arrive on the scene and
My body took me by the throat
Said
Feel this violence rupturing these sobs racking this issuing forth of
Bottomless vomit
Be blinded and be
Repelled

Costumes

My tampon has been falling out
for days now. We make it to the mouth

of the Mississippi, where crowds of fake
jesters on acid take their midday reprieve.

I give a note to a mime and she says
Fuck mimes, I’m a hamburlgar.

I return to my friends and we picture
the currents beneath the calm surface.

A fake princess balance-beams her way
deeper down the mouth. Her toepads find

holds on the soggy skin of a dead drifting oak.
My tampon slips a little further out.

We fantasize about the cruelty of the river,
egging each other on. If you dip even a foot

in it’ll snatch you under. The princess
lays down and takes a drag of her spliff.

All other rivers are more like streams.
The band of burglars migrates

back to the streets. Bits of costume amass
between rocks at the water’s edge.

I spend the rest of the day free-bleeding
into vintage white tulle.

What I Need

I need dick like I need a hole in the head
I said as we walked away
From the guy with the dick now sitting alone
And the man on the dance floor now swinging
His bag of charms at no one

I need dick like I need a hole in the head
I said again
Then the sun rose
Six part harmony sang cauldron of light
And we linked at the elbows
Like borrowed coats

I need dick like I need a hole in the head
                                                                                        Then again
                                                                                        Sometimes

People put holes in their heads I said

I had to specifically request the bed
When it was done I pulled his finger
Towards my open mouth
I’ve heard about people like you he said
You’ll bite it clean of
Or down to the bone
I just didn’t want to go home

I wanted to go home like I wanted
A hole in the head
                                                                         And I have one

Put his finger into it
          Felt no urge to bite
I like to fuck girls’ faces he said

Mary Thames is from Mississippi and currently based in New Orleans. She is an MFA candidate at LSU and the Assistant Editor at New Delta Review.