Hybrid: “Queen of Cups in the Apocalypse” by Kolleen Carney Hoepfner

Queen of Cups in the Apocalypse 

Let my throat tell you how much
I’ve missed you. I drive this expanse 
of nothingness and all the fields 
are on fire. Still, doesn’t it feel good 
to be noticed? Once I named your voice 
for what it was: a crime wave— 
even timbre gripping 
and my shameful panic clawing. 
Violence lining the walls 
of our sepulcher. You disappear 
and I have never once complained.
I take every inch of you: your little ribbon finger. 
The full moon in your palms. Clavicle 
to cut my teeth on. I smile as I do it.  

I whisper to you from a future 
where our synapses don't lead us
to temptation. If you can hear me, 
it's just as well. I am holding your skull in my 
threaded fingers. I am remembering 
your thumb on my windpipe. You ask me 
how I say the things you can't bring yourself to.
Lover, father, creepshow heart. 
Let me tell you. 

We descend and descend 
some more. Consider this: You told me not
to love you and then you let me have it. 
Really gave it to me. How can I 
not tattoo that on my heart? So I speak 
things soaked only in blood and come 
and love. I have created this body
of work, the work of my body,
so I can keep you when you're finally gone. 
When I can grieve you.  

In a future wasteland I make your bread,
I draw your bath. I wash your feet with 
the honeyed hair you keep your secrets in. 
How to touch you. How to taste. 
You say you don't have 
the words like I do. Liar: you're just waiting 
for that final revelation, a fourth 
horseman of sweat and longing. 
Give up the ghost and tell me 
that you love me. Take the pieces I have given you
and form them into our new horizon:
one where the sun dies as it rises 
and you say the words, and mean them. 

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About Kolleen Carney Hoepfner

Kolleen Carney Hoepfner is a poet and editor living in Burbank, CA.  She is the editor in chief at Drunk Monkeys and its chapbook press, Cherry Dress. Her copyediting has appeared in Fangoria, and she is currently working on her first novel.