Black Roses from the Bird Cage by Peter Magliocco

Now that they call us with monsters
is the sleep of modified reason
a dire brood of ourselves?
Old cocktail waitresses become
an augury of malice, holding their drinks
in sweet sorrow watered by time,
where the cheap graces come to reside
in mottled states wrathfully unwise.
Only the toying devils abide us then.

So race the crows with bleeding beaks
wallowing over finely pecked skin.
I’ve quenched my thirst there too.
Only haters can do this, drinking blood
from wounds they inflict on each other:
drowning in the sanguine spring flesh
until scars grow like black roses again
over landscapes of ourselves angels knew,
before plunging from broken sky porches.

Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada, where he’s been active in small press circles for several years. His latest poetry book is Poems for the Downtrodden Millennium from The Medulla Review Publishing.