heads up with Death
she was in it to win
entirely prepared to push all in
she’d been cheated before
at this table
on more than one occasion
and now she was
really gunning for him
the bluffing part was not her forte
no one who cuts herself open
and uses her own bodily fluids
to write poems
has any kind of poker face
the key would be in building the pot
with tight aggressive play
moving on the hands
she knew in her gut
she could win
and throwing all the other cards away
but Death was on his game
he eyed her assets up
and used his big stack
to wear her away
to steal her blinds
and force a desperate play
when the chips were all gone
she leveraged her words
in a blur of fury
spread her legs to the world
gave birth to a book
that decades later still collects royalties
and tends the mythology
of suicide girl celebrity
there was no way Death could match that bet
and so, he had to fold
she cashed out, then and there
turned the knobs up to ten
and climbed into the oven
left the goods that would
really make her famous
on the table
and erased herself
straight into a literary tradition
of troubled genius
and mental illness
that fascinates the rest of us more than
a daily regimen
of growing old on anti-depressants
or just betting the minimum