Two Poems by Megan Mealor

by Megan Denese Mealor

A Serial Killer

His victims could have been sisters: ladylike, dewy-eyed, halcyon,

the swaggering Southern belles of a flaxen new era.

Panache shot out of their fingertips like searchlights.

Eva was exploring nursing and dancing off her teenage years

in democratic nightclubs. Scrappy Regina swam for state two days

before her blustery end; she scratched like a black-footed cat.

Alyssa was at home with three brand-new boys too young

to define his churchyard face. And Tara’s five a.m. jogs

would end in cloud forest fogdrip, supine atop

a canopy floor of feathermosses. 

Whoever could have guessed their Susie Q protocol would

damn them to limestone, damn their mothers to advocacy,

their fathers to piecing back the half-done bones?

Only the dislocated girls can attest to the serrated smile

on his rasping oatmeal face, the unfledged Louis Vuitton Nikes

he sported like a rabid peacock, black titanium wedding band,

snapshots of swinging children in full-grain leather wallets,

his boxy Chevy Orlando wheezing like a star-blazed hippie.

Moderation

Coral-sharp silence spreads its bones

across the red oak treads of our floating staircase,

seeking warmth by the gas fireplace ignition,

its haggard hands dizzy with premonitions.

Tower-triggered lightning under your skin.

The moon lifts us up like a wobbly child

unsteady on revolving feet.

I once trailed you in my father’s Kia accordion

to the moth-eaten edges of our badly dressed town

(amplitude within your arcsecond pulse).

She sang brassy karaoke

with the unblushing fervor

of a dead-end dollface

who’s given up on fairies.