Those who fled told of breath –
whiskey, tobacco, onions, garlic.
No whiff of mint or Arm & Hammer,
just a wicked halitosis. The blood
of those who failed to leave cried
out from the ground ‘til the bones
exhumed from shallow pits were
zipped in bags in white gazebos.
Crimes unconfessed, the couple
unshriven, they begged for burial
over cremation. Souls may twist
on a spit, or writhe in a lake of fire,
but the pair’s remains will lie still,
tossed without care to decompose
in a narrow plot, his coccyx next
to her pubic bone, dead-spooning.
Sharon Larkin’s poems have appeared in anthologies (Cinnamon Press, Eyewear Publishing, Indigo Dreams Publications), in magazines (Prole, Obsessed with Pipework, Here Comes Everyone) and online (Ink, Sweat and Tears, Clear Poetry, The Stare’s Nest). She regularly performs in Gloucestershire, is Chair of Cheltenham’s Arts Council and Poetry Society and has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing. Website: here.