Mary Jane Kelly (1889)

by Emma Johnson-Rivard

 

But of course, at last:
at last, an end.

A dark song, a bloody river
come November.

Remember now,
Mister Thames took five hundred souls that year.
No one wrote stories abut them
or threw their plays up the Grand Guignol
where the players drew silk blood from stolen breath, stage knives
shining

All of them were our beautiful (dead) girls;
at last, finally
one of them was young.

She was blonde, Ms. Mary,
blonde like butter and spread so thin.

One hopes she was drunk
or else she saw it coming.

Pretty girl dead girl blonde girl
gone.

I’m sorry, Ms. Mary
that I know the way of your sternum
and the wide fan of your ribs and not

what you wanted
in daylight.

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