For the Occasion

by Caitlin Scarano
 

An all black wasp.
 
My spine
wrung bell.
 
I beg you.
 
Eyes nuclear
winter blue.
 
Do you still dream
in antler-handled
knifes, funeral
precision?
 
My all black
wasp eating my all
black moth. Silky
with black blood.
 
I wore my grandfather’s
human hair wig
for the occasion.
 
Applied fake eye
-lashes. You refuse to
imagine, so I will.
 
I can’t name the master.
I cannot recognize
this room for a house.
 
Girls with chandelier
vacant faces. Is there a bone
that most resembles you?
 
I lit the wig on fire.
Threw it in the toilet
bowl’s pristine water.
 
That night, your face
smelt of spoiled milk.
 
I was a child counting
her ribs, eating her
scabs. Lust,
 
a black wasp
waiting
on her pillow.

---

CAITLIN SCARANO is a poet in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee PhD creative writing program. She was a finalist for the 2014 Best of the Net Anthology and the winner of the 2015 Indiana Review Poetry Prize, judged by Eduardo Corral. She has two poetry chapbooks: The White Dog Year (dancing girl press, 2015) and The Salt and Shadow Coiled (Zoo Cake Press, 2015). This winter, she will be an artist in residence at the Hinge Arts Residency program in Fergus Falls and the Artsmith’s 2016 Artist Residency on Orcas Island.