New poem for the Anti-Doinkery Society

 THE FIRST PETAL OF VENGEANCE

Princess Carbonara and I
sat around last night drinking wine.
She leaned in close and asked me if
I had any secrets. Even
if I didn't, I'd have said yes
just to get attention like that
so I smiled and sat back and tossed
my hair. 'Tell me,' she said and of
course I said 'You go first. I have
the stronger liver.' She told me
love is for idiots. Hardly
a secret, I said. I made her
promise not to tell and I led
her to the back of the garden.
I stretched a hibiscus bloom big
and flat, pinned it against a tree
trunk and stared at it like a white
screen until there were blotches of
colour, then moving shapes, and then
clear pictures of everything I
was thinking. 'How do you do that?'
she asked, amazed, unable to
stop looking. I held my finger
to my lips. 'Ssh. Watch. Parlor trick.'
They were all out in the open,
all the things I was supposed to
forget and did not, a grudge raw
and bloody like a steak, vengeance,
murders of trust and breaks nearly
forgotten but still and perhaps
forever on crutches. 'This is
better than anything you'd find
at the movies,' I said. I was
pleased to give the princess more than
what she had asked for. I gave her
the kind of talent one does not
see these days. Next time she thinks of
secrets she will think of me, and
remember as I will. I will
remember her horrified slack
jaw when she first saw what a real
humiliation looks like. I
picked the flower when we were done
with the show and wove it in her
hair. 'Souvenir," I said. She had
more wine and we both promised to
forget, though we will not, oh no.