Tonight's Poet Corner: Eight Minutes
Eight Minutes by Belinda Roddie There was something egregiously peaceful about the chatter of ticking in the corner of the living room, where the dust formed crop circles on the table that preserved a mummified rose in a skull and three never-lit candles. The piss-poor lighting in the space gave her face a disturbing appeal, the shadows clustered, like cockroaches, around her nose, waiting for an exterminator in the form of a sunbeam to fry them out of their safe haven, their crackling exoskeletons the only sound in a vacuum of denial and self-inflicted hesitation. Well, besides the second hand. She asked me if I would like another glass of wine, as red as the velvet around her neck, plush lust bunched up against her chin, the pointed beak of a falcon preparing to peck the eyes out of unsuspecting prey. I loosened my collar, and the stem wobbled between my fingers as I handed her the chalice, and all at once, the rug seemed to cave in beneath my sneakers. Ther