David A. Bart
Nine Times Veronica
a girl’s invocation game
A spirit wants a shell—
the psychopath's braincase
or hollow of a doll.
Even the shucked armor
of a crab will do.
For a voice box, it may wish
to appropriate the horn
of an old Victrola
or toddler's telephone.
But if a spirit wants
to put on a girl like you
with shadow eyes
and a melt of amber hair,
it will find your mirror
and get inside.
Did you see someone
wizard thin flash across
the glass, gangly legs
showing just enough skin
to make you look twice?
Tonight you'll need a needle,
brandy swiped from your mother's
bathroom, candlelight and 3am.
A ghost wants skin pricks,
burnt Sulphur and for the ninth time
look in the mirror and chant
her name until the fetch looking
back at you is Veronica—
biting your lip, taking your breath,
wearing that giddy fright
she made out of your face.
Fringe
It’s him again.
We can tell by the crisp flutter
of stapled papers he pins to our door
before scurrying back to his mystery house.
We try to decipher his newsletter,
a smudged mimeograph of typos
exposing Illuminati and Chemtrails.
On clear evenings he hoists a lawn chair
to his roof and tries to photograph singing
globes of light—Venusians who visit
only after he falls asleep. He hints about
a shriveled cryptid keeping in his freezer
that we aren’t allowed to see but draws
our attention to the year ’round
statuary in his yard; light-up magi,
angels cast out of sidewalk cement,
cemetery wreaths, a fractured gnome.
A tangled coat hanger pokes through a window
to snag signals for a TV we barely ever hear
over the turn it down screams of his elderly
mother from whom it seems he never detached.
Even now, in his forties, he’s still her junior
scientist who can resuscitate a wristwatch
or sea monkeys but can’t stop killing his frogs,
persisting in the belief that life’s puzzle
can be solved by taking it apart.
Witch-boy’s testimony, 1629
Who are you, I asked the spider-legged
kitten that scurried down the drapes.
Call me playmate, it said and became
Philip, my friend.
We straddled his silver pitchfork
and a whirlwind took us to the stream
where he baptized me.
This is what I saw: two mice shivered
and stretched into girls.
They taught me how to make fleas
in a skillet of grease.
Philip painted a dead dog with milk
and newborn rabbits leapt out.
This is how we pray; Saint Joseph,
we adore you. Watch over
all of us witches.
A goat as large as a mare
took Phillip and me to a hilltop
where a hag and boys like us roasted
something on a pyre.
Our dancing brought hailstones
that shattered a flock of birds.
Three cats served us stolen wine.
We rested on a mound of sparrows
and that night Phillip became
my little bride. We will never
belong to God.
David A. Bart (DavidABart.com) is a writer from Arlington, Texas. His poetry appears in I-70 Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Poet Lore, Slipstream, Sixfold, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Margie, Cider Press Review, San Pedro River Review, Illya’s Honey , Red River Review, Pinyon Poetry, The January Review and three anthologies from Mutabilis Press. He conducts creative writing workshops and teaches music on the elementary level.
Banner Art:
Photo by Baran Lotfollahi, Unsplash, 2019
