I Do Not Intend to Be Polite by B. Lynne Zika

Shut up. Put the damn bottle down.

Then go away and leave me alone.

I wish to converse with Death,

that piebald buccaneer with his audacious

humility, quietly slipping in between breaths

so that the next one never comes.

You bastard. You’re trying to get your hands

on [the] one I love. 

You haven’t done enough?

You took his daughter! Barely 

out of her cap and gown. 

Now you plan to take his Life,

a verdant landscape sprung into being 

from a battlefield of need and longing, 

and point it in the direction of nothingness? 

Life takes two people who don’t know how to love

except with entirety, throws them up in the air,

then steps back to watch where they land.

Then you, Hungry Death, come along, 

mouth watering, throwing back shots 

of Ole Smoky Blue Flame Whiskey,

and you tilt the game board just so

so that one of us is aimed in your direction.

You know we’ll fight.

Everyone knows

you’ll win in the end, but I’m taking bets

on the days before. If illness blocks the road

to a Southern wood where I might pluck

one honeysuckle bloom to teach him

the glory of nectar, then I’ll gather fruit

from the local market and layer it

with angel cake and sweet pudding

and lace a hint of orange with Grand Marnier,

then top it with cream whipped to a frenzy,

and I will feed it to him, bite by bite,

his eyes closed so that all of him

is concentrated on his tongue.

No matter what you do, you cannot kill 

the memory of such pleasure.

You separate all in the end,

but you have no power to bring a stop      

to the gorgeous crusade

we mortal combatants call love.

B. Lynne Zika’s photography, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in numerous literary and consumer publications. 2022 publications include Delta Poetry Review, Backchannels, Poesy, Suburban Witchcraft, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. In addition to editing poetry and nonfiction, she worked as a closed-captioning editor for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Awards include: Pacificus Foundation Literary Award in short fiction, Little Sister Award and Moon Prize in poetry, and Viewbug 2020 and 2021Top Creator Awards in photography. Website: https://artsawry.com/.