‘All Roads’ and 3 more by Donna Dallas

ALL ROADS

Has everyone gone dark on me?
Stare at lines in the mahogany floor
Looks like a stick figure
Missing one leg
A hobbling Jesus
Or does it represent me
Gimping through apocalypse
After apocalypse
And if I ever thought I had one brilliant idea….
I thought wrong
All roads lead to a mirage
A voluptuous
Body
Floating on a unicorn raft
In a sparkling sapphire nirvana
Close in on that beauty
Closer now….
find she’s just a stick figure
Sinking into murky mud
While I stagger away
In the dark searching for
The after life

While in Ordinary Time

I had to choose from six different types of sugar this morning in the coffee shop while the weird man who looked like Rambo-Santa was watching me I thought he was a pedo I just realized I’m in the game duh like when was I not I turned quick and got a crick in my neck and tried looking for an acupuncturist ones with pink hair know what they are doing this is completely untrue but I tell myself this because she has pink hair and is working on my neck like a demon while four ambulances and several fire engines stream by in urgent panic the siren noise grilling and deepening and the world may be ending of course while I have twelve needles in my neck what better time for Armageddon what better time to pull up on a street corner and thirty task force combat police I don’t know what the fuck get out and cover the four corners – I think this is it – really as Magenta the acupuncturist is now intently needling a map down my upper spine I say Magenta is it the end? Is this the apocalypse? The world war???!!…..as my stomach drops because I have $68 left in my wallet Magenta strokes my back inserts another needle and replies the world ended December 22nd, 2012 baby none of this is real……

OVER

Damn girl.
Look at you.
Who made venom
so thick
course through your blood?

The cold flow
of winter
is in you.
Blue blood, blue eyes,
dead heart.

Too many footprints
over your grave—rough hands
on your body.

Bastard girl
with icy hands
and cold lips.

No one loves you.

BREAKING

Here begins my death
and your life
we cannot float at the same time
one is stronger while one grows weaker
one goes away and the other stays
one covers
and one lies dormant covered

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Donna Dallas has appeared in a plethora of journals, most recently The Opiate, Beatnik Cowboy, Tribes, Horror Sleaze Trash and Fevers of the Mind. She is the author of Death Sisters, her first novel published by Alien Buddha Press. Her chapbook, Smoke and Mirrors, launched in 2022 with New York Quarterly. Donna serves on the editorial team of NYQ.
donnaanndallas@gmail.com
@DonnaDallas15

Image created on DALL-E