Ashes, Ashes

Milled pepper cakes her throat –
Ashes, ashes, palm up over her mouth and she grabs a handful;
Her knuckles are scabbed over
With a million unfinished tug-o-wars,
Her perfume is Chanel No. Anise and Expired Mothballs,
Her wages trail behind her for miles,
What night-speckled train, a gown, a queen!
Hippo-mouthed boys follow to her shut door
And leave neat piles of hacked up devotion
That grip the pores of concrete steps for her to find in the morning;
She thinks it’s her prince – a fairy, of course –
He knows of the sting of badelaire blemishes,
But not of peppered wounds,
And in those worries
The ashes gather.