mary bell

all that mattered was to lie well, lay near the well, lay quiet now. she presses on his neck. what happens now. do they die? what quiet curiosity in children. now: grass and purple weeds and he. a playful discovery--broken scissors tearing, her initials lazy and scraped. it isn't that bad; we all die sometime. she cuts his hair. she leaves the scissors behind. she leaves the boy behind. he has not taken a breath in some time. i couldn't kill a bird by the neck, she says. it's horrible, that, she says.

in a possible future, police do not catch on and the town quietly forgets. the tear in her dress has no meaning, now; there is almost nothing to regret, now. hear the birds here. hear the train near here. hear the school letting out for lunch and she among them here. what happens now. shouldn't he be here.

a possible past: wait now for a terrible gentleness--fingers on his neck and press. he is small and still. he still believes this is a game. mary bell knows not why she wraps his neck. but what happens if you choke someone. where will he be next. now: a bird lifts and, startled, she loosens, he runs away.

murder isn't that bad, ripping your dress isn't that bad, staining your knees isn't that bad, breaking the scissors isn't that bad, tearing his skin isn't that bad, hiding away isn't that bad, blaming another isn't that bad, and now a confession isn't that bad, and your new home is cold but isn't that bad, mary bell, murder isn't that bad, mary bell, ten years old, isn't that bad, mary bell isn't that bad, mary

Ted Bundy

Ted Bundy

I.

Before sweat gripped crowbars, three strands
of blonde, the boat imagined, or plaster
of Paris,

Stephanie, the first to touch Ted's wrist, skin
purple with vein, stops courting.

II.

Now teeth pocketed skin, blood
in the carpet grain. Brain, too--
red and yawning.

I feel like a
vampire, Ted says.

III.

The picture shows a raised palm, the start
of a smile. Now even the attractive
fail--how unnerving

to look at Ted and think
lust.

IV.

A chair.
A crowd cheers when the hearse and Ted pass.
And fireworks,

lighter fluid, a barbeque pit, somewhere a first kiss,
fruit sticky fresh, children circling in play.

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley

The shortest day of the year has come
and gone. It is lighter from here
but colder, still. The woman writes for six months
about the man before he touches her neck
where the hair is soft and
sparse--

like the young girl's, tempted away
from the fairground, her hair so
blonde and thin and lit by the flash
(-ing lightning, the night stormy)
of the camera, her skin bare her mouth gagged her
arms bound and an audio tape recording.

I've lost track of how long it has been since.
Your charcoal hands touch mine and flinch
now. But I will do as you ask. First, you must ask.
First, pour yourself a drink and tell me
what you like most and do not be scared when
I become it.

The woman meets the man at work.
She cuts her hair and wears lipstick
careful and red. The change comes slow,
then speeding. She finds the girl
to help bury in the moor. The woman discovers
not love but something close. I find

your hiddens: the girls glossy and small.
For two weeks, only oranges. My hands
smell like a grove. My ribcage becomes a toppled
branch. Ask for blood and I will give you blood,
the woman said to the man.
I said to you.

People say the woman was polite and
still, always, an animal waiting to dart.
How tiny, those hands shaking as she touches the
girl's cheek. As she passes her to the man.
As she hits record. When the cassette runs out,
the girl's still screaming.

It is silent now. Snow falls slow and you are gone
and I apologize, I was never as dedicated as she.

Jeffrey Dahmer, or I Like You So Much I Could Eat You

The most startling of all is the quiet and
the fingerprints we leave on the glass.
In the morning, there is snow and thin circles of ice in the shape of my hand.

I think, momentarily, that I could fall in love with him--
he touches the tops of my feet and wants me,
terribly.

There are footprints to the edge of a cliff.
I walk inside of them to leave none of my own. Please, honey,
lick my wind-chapped lips and tell me

not to love him
as violently as I know I can.
The first lover I had bit until blood filled the spaces between each tooth;

the serial killer kills out of fear of
abandonment. He eats a hand and then an arm.
About the victim, he says, If I could have kept him longer, all of him,

I would have.
I drink warm tea and miss
each of his fingertips individually. I want to dunk them in milk.

Under the porch, a praying mantis kills her mate.
If the phone rings, I don't hear it.
I touch my fingertips and pretend one hand,

the left hand, belongs to him. There is no name for this.
Let's call it cannibalistic tenderness. Let's call it
what it is:

ILikeYouSoMuchICouldEatYou.
Apartment 213 is raided. Police discover
a skull in the closet, elbows in the icebox.

The pelican eats her young,
maybe. Women everywhere describe a desire
to chew on their infants.

The serial killer is up to a new man a week.
My feet fall off the bed. In the morning
my toes are frostbite cold.

He refuses to cut them off and I like him less for it.
We woke up in the dark and he overstayed his welcome, but
still I want him closer.

Like, move in next door closer and
tear down the wall between our kitchens closer.
The praying mantis has great regret for her actions--

I know this. The serial killer says I wanted him to stay with me so
I strangled him, he says, I still have guilt, he says, Please try to
understand. I'm sorry, sir, but if I understand,

I will not admit it.
The police discover a body in the valley beneath
a cliff. Inside her smiling mouth,

a third lip, the sharp tip of a tongue.
I walk back home and the ice under my shoes crunches
like the smallest of bones.