Dulces Desvarios – Elizabeth Victoria Aldrich

December 11, 2019

X:After Persephone ran an all-girls school

open to all sacrilegious princesses

presently located in the San Fernando Valley–

the pheromones on campus as bountiful

as Aquanet before a first date–

each of us purred for her respective religion,

electric-strung to the hands of our throats.

It wasn’t my first time,

far past breaking the entr’acte

from a hypersonic sixth grade meeting of lips

underneath punk denim and cerise netting.

We have to tell the other girls now:

our gold cage has no more room.

They do not belong here, the atmosphere

is all ours: hearts of ink waltzing over lizard

tongues,

the smack of mulberry cream.

XX:

& so with a laconic strut

I faulted sweetly into the 7AM brilliance

of Sunset Boulevard

& for once palm trees outshone skyscrapers,

the voltaic ruby W, even God’s bottle of

Patron where God doesn’t exist

& what if she did? we’d still

suck suck suck the marrow from

our cigarettes like we knew better

than to quit so young,

& send our smoke off into the aimless sky

with a kiss of bitter lipstick.XXX:

Tourists,

you can only dream up the length of legs

stretched out longer than Ventura Blvd.

Tourists:

Call us what you wish,

but we belong here more

than you ever will.

The sun that burns you

gives us life.

See your face? You smile

like beauty queens who just lost,

who are being showered

with someone else’s confetti.

Why do you try to hold back tears,

to hear anything above the screaming?

There is only silence as the other girl

gets the tiara, its own expensive apparatus

of wand-high Swarovski crystals.

You can hear the beep and clunk

of 90s dial-up as it coyly slinks

from its satin fortress to crown

her brunette curls. What a bitch,

you paid so much for this dress.

You knew water-proof mascara

was a cruel Valentines joke,

but not a treasure saved

for such telegenic blue lighting.

The music is corny Americano, past

your hours and fair-weather friends.

Relatives are saying let’s go home.

They always laughed when you tried

to toddle back to reality, back and forth

with the blacksmith’s daughter.

Now you can eat a hamburger

with extra everything in it,

with enough grease to shine

each goddamn acrylic nail.