A Belladonna Surprise Party

By Rose Jenny

You are a punch bowl full of nightshade

that makes blood confetti from my mouth,

and tied to the bed your surprise is laid

next to vertebrae cups, shoddily made,

like slurred words spoken in the deep south.

You are a punch bowl full of nightshade

that bubbles and hisses, and in it I wade

like a dead rat, satiating a devil’s drought,

and tied to the bed your surprise is laid

limp in these chambers, a torso splayed

like the open maw of a cottonmouth.

You are a punch bowl full of nightshade

turned over swings on which we played,

all spilled, staining memory in doubt

and tied to the bed your surprise is laid,

a massacre, our sins since weighed,

to these transgressions we are devout.

You are a punch bowl full of nightshade

and tied to the bed your surprise is laid.

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Rose Jenny (she/her) is a trans writer/performer based in Tampa, Florida. Currently, she is finishing her bachelor's degree in creative writing at University of South Florida. She has previously studied various forms of writing at Marymount Manhattan College, The Barrow Group, and Sackett Street Writers' Workshop.