Scream Queen

by Damon Hubbs

You’re a tough-talking Rizzo

and I’m your swamp thing

there are worse things we could do

than fall in love

who cares what the neighborhood thinks

or the fiddler on the roof

the Hammer horror girls are jealous

but your husband John

spends weekends watching Forbidden Planet

synthing five-four crosswaves on a Quadra,

he doesn’t suspect a thing.

I root you water lilies

and dam you rivers with bouquets of orchids

we escape New York

to Annandale-on-Hudson

the sky flaunting like a cheesecake poster

corseted with purple clouds,

we eat cookies and talk stag movies

until the fog spills out

O quel cut t’as, I say

but love

is a cannonball run

and your memory

a pink satin bodysuit

hanging in the closet

of the Portofino Hotel & Marina—

years later, when I see you

at the horror convention at Virginia Beach

you’re still a beauty

and I’m still a beast.

Damon Hubbs: film & art lover / pie bird collector / author of the chapbook The Day Sharks Walk on Land (Alien Buddha Press). His second chapbook, Charm of Difference, is forthcoming in 2024 (Back Room Poetry). Recent poems have been featured in South Broadway Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Fixator Press, Otoliths, Apocalypse Confidential, and Book of Matches. He lives in New England. @damon_hubbs