If Stripe the Younger Sister

I’m the who’s who here’s a commemorative
Keychain for all the doesn’t she
Never eats a thing praise
Be who’s inside
Every model
But a gremlin
And fast cars and dark
Theaters who butchers
Snow white no they shouldn’t have fed us
After midnight congratulations here’s a franklin mint
For getting in who’s the hussy my mogwai friend
Bedding the cartoonist who’s the banker rolling in
His dirty boxers in the dumbwaiter after who pins
Takes aim at your lovely sad giz reputation
Your eternal sterling giz reputation
Side-eyeing
When we grind
Hands in the vitamix here’s a lucky foot here’s the original
Ideas who beheads the mother
Who feeds on the dog so who
Pupaes into I                                   the who
Of who’s who             you and I
Before popcorn-crunching kids plucking
Plush you from shelves infinite
Before lifting the shades and our species
Disintegrates thanks to the who’s who they say
The selfless the shared billy blankets this is why
I must break your arms and then your neck
Speeding in our little pink corvette
Into triple sun
By gelfling hand or else        by carol
Channing come together as the white queen
Gone sheep clark gable
A notch on the post of our stable we are starving
Boil the pet rabbit my little tramp we’re not done yet
Call for the head of bambi another who’s left
The matrix the glowing axe of optimus
Divine ultra magnus with broken
Static on the television who’s who they ask
When we’ve taken who’s that Carol Ann say it

Mas Dolor

When you leave                    you go out                  a brick

                        house

           stripped

of copper and sunbirds        

At the high table I stand for the reckoning 
I’m ready to sleep I’m ready to walk out
I need a big band                  no                    a badly written
                        muse on roller skates
The winning hand of a musical
Oh evil woman of xanadu
To hell with your strange magic and mortal time
To hell with higgs boson and fading stars that guide
The stellar the loud the wide the look at me
The look at me in the night
                        Wasted
            Wasted
Sister I wanna let it all hang out the dirty
dirty laundry the night our tongues spun
like some cirque du soleil
wheel of death
So        send in the pink ladies
No the spice girls no drown me in the pool
and darling I’ll undivine
the dolphin within
every showgirl

            Cause when you leave         

                        I’ll destroy 

            your memory

with a face
smothered
in cold cream
No       more      wire         hangers
in midnight raids
No basic instinct
to scratch my face
so I fall through a glass table
Let’s just say when it happens
I’ll know who killed me
I’m the good twin
surviving the strip club
when everything goes to seed
I was such a mean girl
so you never had to be
The shame has surfaced
The séance has ended
You are rubescent
in the sunrise of old man wishes
well I never got off the damn planet

                                                Game over girl          

                        game over

I’m already gone                              
                                                             dismantling
             
                                    the junkyards

knocking         the scrappers to their knees           

             
            this time I’m going in           my sweet

                                              sweet
                                                                              all day
                                      
            and all of the night 

Born to a Mexican mother and Jewish father, Rosebud Ben-Oni is a CantoMundo Fellow and a recipient of the 2014 NYFA Fellowship in Poetry. Her work is forthcoming or appears in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, Bayou, and Puerto del Sol, among others. She is the author of Solecism (Virtual Artists Collective, 2013) and an Editorial Advisor for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts (vidaweb.org). Find out more about her at 7TrainLove.org.