My Margarita Tastes Like Regret Poem by Rachael Swiss

i'm not laughing anymore.

twenty plus years of auditioning for fear
of course i laughed
notes tinkling like icicles falling
piercing old snow and frosty hearts
the sound resonating in empty ventricles
chamber orchestras conducting no more
currents electric
muscle spasms and orgasms
cold-blooded and dead love.

venice stinks of rotting fish
and i laughed.

my gondolier, love-boat dreamer,
astrologer and navigator of vast
uncharted starry landscapes
twinkling mischievous in his eyes
a glint - feral, virile,
boredom's glaze
the singer of old tunes
show tunes, love croons,
a sleepy melody, insomnia cure
maybe i could fall without him
if memory served.

i ordered the steak tar-tar
and i laughed.

kings heckle at jesters too
amusing musings punishable by death
and still the jokes demand the telling
he loves me, he loves me,
he wants and he needs me,
not the mother or the sister
a refreshingly honest heroine
he loves, he says
he's cold, he says
the frigid heart pumps slow
growth stunted, mutated
sickly like molded almond cookies
or gangrene biscotti.

he said he loved me once
and i laughed.

the disease of the stomach which feasts on the eyes
cancerous cantankerous and twisting
knotting in pain
bitter-sweet and steeped in acid
surface cells sloughed away by hidden keys
revealing a newer brighter deeper
loving laughing singulary
solitary me
children grow and still
the circus man demands more height.

like a cactus flower love blooms in drought
and oh, how i laugh.

i watch it blossom and blush
hotter than a summer's poison heat
he was the pretty fling to my
prickly thing
faintly scraping and i drew the blood
we painted the sky red like a mexican sunset
he tapped me and i wept the blue
agave
depressed, the shots line up
drowning them out with an adios
they fired away at the back of my throat
till i could no longer speak.

this tequila tastes like tears i said.
and i laughed.

you left me speechless and numb.
you left me.
and so i laughed.