Honey Stung

Time heals all wounds, but you gave her
the whole damn flu. So sick, so sad, so that girl
with the wailing scream. All her sweet dreams
drip with bees, and it doesn’t make a difference
if she’s naked, she’s got
old pandemics, and new
vaccines. Shattered rules and chiffon
wrinkles in her open and closed case
of the Mondays, the sundaes, the HIPAA
violations. A local doctor shoots
her with target radiation, all that money
for nothing and chips for free means
she’s just a virgin, touched

for the thirty-first time. She’s a Betsy,
she’s a bleeder, she’s broke
in a dam on a shame-damp day, trying like hell
to weave her bambi braid. Hello
millennium, she took her medicine,
a piece of your wrong connection. You’ll tune
in to find the light, spin the dial, gild the guide
to your guilty god, and bristle brush
away her pain through strands
of T-cells, gliding gold plaited placebos, and honey
stings. Gotta keep this girl

on a real short leash or she will ride
the wind on another planet, hop a plane and ask
what the plan is. She’s sick, she’s dying,
and if you’re too busy try try trying to make
her stay, she’ll slice those strands and fly
away, severed connection in the night.

She asks the bartender how
she might give you the slip, he curls
his lip and says, there’s a window
in that bathroom on the right.

*

Black Sabbath Hymn for My Brother

Shattered glass, yellow lines, you drank
from the chalice. I can’t drive
without seeing your absence.
The sun lifted you with her rising, swept
her skirt across your eyes and gave thanks
for broken body, spilled blood. The sky
and I accept Eucharist this morning, a fender
for a crucifix, red racing stripes and a crown
of shards amid soft brown hair. You were
an iron man, smelted in fire, baptized
in the creek water of our front yard. How did
you become a child of the grave, messiah
on a gravel throne? Disciples gather a fallen
feast, last supper on the asphalt, a red
stop light to wash your feet. Our family’s
Fraction Rite is made with empty
whiskey bottles and the wafting burn
of a cigarette still smoking in your hand.

*

Heather Truett holds an MFA from the University of Memphis and is a Ph.D. candidate at FSU. Her debut novel, KISS AND REPEAT, was released from Macmillan in 2021. She has work in Thimble, Hunger Mountain, Sweet, Whale Road Review, Jabberwock, and others. Heather serves on staff for Beaver Magazine and is an editor emeritus for The Pinch. Find out more at www.heathertruett.com.