Jack o' the lantern! Joan the wad,
 Who tickled the maid and made her mad!
 Light me home, the weather's bad.

 

 
Through the Fog, Light

Arlene Ang
 
 

The incubation of panic sets in
when the left headlight sizzles out,
then the right, like fine blue china
crushed by truck tires.

There is no need for articulation.
Your wife in black does her best in the front seat,
rain like octopi slap-echoes with her curses.
Since the hospital event, everything has been your fault.

Moon is devoured by clouds on such roadside evenings.
This eggshell car is onyx, hysteria coalesces
towards the flashlight in the glove compartment,
towards bludgeoning the wife to something less than aborted fetus.

Then silence as your blood-licked hands open the door.

Luminescence looms as ghost of your stillborn son,
steps that venture on asphalt. Hope salivates
for the body brought away by midwifing hands,
for flickering like matches struck in mist.

Breathing stops when your tongue is torn out
by small hands, the plaintive murmur of a newborn.
Your gurgle of blood speaks eloquently of the undead.
Blindness as fire is stabbed into eyes. Seconds pass for screams.
 

 

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