It had no lights or luminous tissues, a small eye

by Karyna McGlynn

the thing wasn’t Robert Taylor
slapping me awake in sepia

 I didn’t come to, consumptive

mouth all wrong, drooping at
the corners, broken bedroom floor

 lumping the state of my animus

into this unspeakable Janus head:
masculine face atrophied from

my monstrous ingénue wardrobe

my flippancy—it flipped a penny
heads it said: now you had better

get in the jeep or I’ll hurt you

understand? your body is now
property of the Panzer Division

believe me, blond bitch

bend over the mahogany chair,
expose your buttocks to the brand:

 white oak leaf seared into my hip

I cried out, I turned to look at it:
emaciated, brainwashed, pathetic

 like a 90 lb. accountant spitting

sand back in the wrong direction
I’m not the one you want, I said

 its mouth grew whip-thin & pious

it said you can be killed or fucked
for what you’ve done to me, but

what was it that I did? I asked

a rash decision spread rapidly
over the room, answered back

too quickly, this ersatz officer

eyeing me, this high plains drifter
astride the bloodshot boomtown

of my gut, my bad impulses

which stared me straight down
a mile-long sight, a cocked gun