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Skeleton’s Manifest Destiny
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There was a time when I wandered the wide ochre plains of the West.
Montana, the Dakotas, passing through Sioux land and Chippewa villages
as my brushed leather chaps pounded the flank of my horse.
My corset held me upright even as I dozed.
My grey braids grew brittle and wisp. My throat filled with dust.
I rode into the sun for endless days,
not knowing when I’d stop, if ever, on land that stretched to eternity.
When night fell, the stars subsumed me as if I’d never existed
In this vast world.
Where women suffer to be Cowboys.
.
I became a snake shedding its skin in the shade of a rock
A brook trout, run aground in the furl of a shallow pool
A cactus drying up at the root, just as a flower bloomed on my crown.
.
Life could not and did not hold me.
My flesh time was brief.
But my bones,
polished by the sands into hard alabaster,
and set down in the gully of a trail,
Have become a thing of beauty
for the eyes of the passing traveler.
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Skeleton in a Red Dress
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I once was a hot mama.
A warm handful mining for it
On the fire escapes of my youth.
Flesh pressed into wrought-iron rungs where we’d lay
In rapt desire, those summer nights
All sweetness, plumpness and bounty.
Now, I’m a rack on which hangs
this scarlet silk-lined subterfuge, as I
Hobble down those same metal steps
Arm bones clattering against hip bones,
Calling to the boys below in seductive tones
through a casement of grey teeth.
.
Wanna hang? I ask. I lock a thighbone.
They freeze, then take off down the street.
I know I’m dead to them,
Still, I raise my carpus and blow a kiss,
Landing it on those
Tender Virgin Haunches.
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Janet Faller Sassi’s work has appeared recently in the American Writer’s Review, the Last Call, Chinaski Anthology, and VIA(Voices in Italian Americana.), ‘Untapped New York’, ‘Intrepid Times’, ‘Splice Today’ and ‘City Limits’. She earned a Master’s in English-Creative Writing from Fordham University www.everlastingmisfortune.com.
North of Oxford 