Ghost forward through secret garden tunes
to St. John’s Priory. She plays black abbey
ribs back alley, she worships electric chess
and smacks hard his jukebox.
On weekend nights Queen Jane sniffs glue/beneath her bed with Rougarou.
She learned to reed, learned to bob her head,
zipped her orchids in their vases. Coast-line sinks.
Queen Jane coasts across the Spillway Bridge,
rainclouds a Rorschach-uterus plugged up.
Nicks her car and spinal cord, disk bulged
and turtle-shell broken, all ivory beneath her skirt.
Scuffed marble. So midnight clutches his fist.
So Queen Jane settles and reapplies
her lipstick, collects q-tips instead of sleep.
Deaf screams, death by screens
she names street-signs and hurricanes,
reads his mosquito bites like braille.
Still. Jugs of wine with sleepy Rougarou,
he shares a lullaby upon her bed. A hand-me-down tune.
And if I die before I wake/I pray the prayer my prayer to take.
Elizabeth Theriot is a Louisiana-native and University of New Orleans graduate. She has just completed her first year as an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where she is an Assistant Poetry Editor for the Black Warrior Review.