CULT

After Charlie Says

I once tore my sofa apart, searching

for pennies to feed my child.

It makes sense Charlie kept his girls

starving. There is nothing like hunger

to meet the death of your own free will.

LSD, the only constant on their tongues,

shattering the concept of time,

which is always present when you live

with someone who holds your hair back

from the sickness they cause.

Being alone was more frightening

than a man who’d have taken my life.

He had the power to push me

to push the knife into him first.

He could have me forever

locked up because women who kill

are a peculiar danger. We get maximum

sentences and our own cable channel.

I proved myself with lovebirds

shot from their nest. He taught me to aim

and I pulled that trigger all on my own.

I don’t know what I’m capable of now. 

Those ranch girls and I have skipped

up the Cielo Drive of our own ego

to kill it, replace it with the godhead

of a man who says we are his favourite. 

Us girls, we know what it means

to be so desperate for love,

we’d do anything for family.

Carson Wolfe is a Mancunian poet. In 2021, they were an Aurora prize winner and a Button video contest winner. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming with Fourteen Poems, Rattle, The Penn Review, and Button Poetry. You can find them on Instagram @vincentvanbutch.