Valentine by Sam Regal (Lucent Dreaming Issue 3)

My horoscope read:
as you keep on living,
my darling, who for?
And out of my ear thrust
a dandelion stem
that shanked my beloved
through the rib

before itself hardening
to bone. My love had no words.
A stout onlooker—Fatty
Arbuckle’s kin—jetéd
across the street
toward my fecund head,
whispered, will forever
I feel as in this moment
alone? I craned my neck
south, watched the East

River gurgle brownly-
keenly downstream. I sputtered—
I espied, could it be?, evidently
my full head
set abob, adrift, Intrepid
within a bloaty mafioso’s
unmanned jaw. Is that

my cheek on which schools
of piranha do shred?
Am I parmesan, only,
to you?, my neck hole
hummed before
filling with blood

& what my mother
once said—You must
suffer for beauty! To be
loved is to vanquish
all thought!