Juliet by Samantha Duncan | Really System: Issue Eight

Juliet

Samantha Duncan

A tough caution
for the rice paper hope
faithfully sticking out
of my dELiA*s catalogue,
I ruffle the pages
for a skin-lightening
instruction manual.
Like last time,
a blonde falls out,
instantly becomes
legs, Ferrari, ice cream,
a rain-soaked light bulb,
for whom armor shows up.
Claire Danes, I am
your detritus, swept
by the torn hems
of JNCOs against this
sparkle-dirt, where even
melancholy is a tough
propaganda for the un-fair-
skinned. Claire Danes,
I won’t perfect your
ugly cry or furrowed brow,
but I’ll live inside them
until I’m cut out and glued
on a collage declaring
BLISS and MYSTERY
in ransom-note font,
my mouth sealed
with wet rice paper hope
of attracting young Montague.

Samantha Duncan is the author of the chapbooks One Never Eats Four (ELJ Publications, 2014) and Moon Law (Wild Age Press, 2012), and her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Menacing Hedge, Fruita Pulp, and Posit. She serves as Executive Editor for ELJ Publications and reads for Gigantic Sequins. She lives in Houston and can be found at planesflyinglowoverhead.blogspot.com and @SamSpitsHotFire.

ISSUE EIGHT: Melty Slayers | next poem →