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dancing girl press, 2015
$7.00
Tara Boswell is a New Jersey native who lives and writes in Chicago. She is an Assistant Poetry Editor for Phantom Books Her work is published or forthcoming in Salt Hill, PANK, Heavy Feather Review, ILK, Parcel, and elsewhere.
FOR MY EIGHTH BIRTHDAY I ASK FOR A GUN my parents play crime shows to scare me to sleep tonight there are no signs of forced entry but there is blood in the yard the blood on the kitchen tiles has pooled under her head and turned syrup all of the cabinets are swung open but nothing was taken the family wants her gold necklace from the evidence bag but is kept waiting in the lobby they won’t show the victim’s panties rolled halfway to her knees in the dramatic reenactments before there was DNA there was blood typing and stomach contents weighed in plastic my dad says it’s water and clay mother says go to sleep but how does the duct tape feel on the actress and does she know the prop guy personally how she must wash off her double ligature marks how close he came to coming when fake stabbing (dad what’s coming) polygraph needles an actress bound
an employee of the nearby brass factory explains the scratches on his face as metal shavings twenty years later he is much softer than composite sketches and the knuckles on his hands have grown
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