Melanie Browne

A Couple of Unpretentious Skeletons Decide to Go Skinny Dipping

they watch the
moonlight
shimmer across
their pale white
bones,

taking
delight as the
water ripples
around them
in concentric
circles,

they roll joints
with their
phalanges,
passing them
back and forth,

they play rock,
paper, scissors
and brutal
sessions
of mercy,

grateful for
the absence of
flesh,
they laugh
about the
banality of
hemoglobin,

they stack
their vertebrae
against the trees,
munching on
Doritos and
pointing out
the Asellus Borealis

The Cloak of Nothingness

At a Halloween party
that year,
he had tied a few
black trash bags
around his waist,

another
was wrapped
around his
neck for
a cape

he was
barefoot
and his
greasy locks
hung down
In front of his
eyes,

every once in awhile
he would swat
at his hair
as if it was a fly

I asked him
about his costume,
What is it,
I wanted to know,

It's the black
cloak of nothingness’
He said,
His speech beginning
To slur,

you know,
before God
created the earth?

I wanted to
Ask him
If God kept
Postponing
the light
Because of
His massive hangovers,

but by then
he had flown away
into The crowd,
the cloak of nothingness
fluttering behind him

Trotsky's Ghost On Holiday

In Barcelona the weather is lovely,
Trotsky's ghost goes for a walk,
he thinks there are too many pigeons,
and points his finger at them,
'you are disturbing my thoughts,'
he tells them sternly,
but he forgot what those thoughts
were, and now he has a craving
for ice cream



CP

Melanie Browne lives in Texas with her husband and three children. She likes Halloween and always went trick or treating dressed as a zombie bride. Her work has appeared in Word Riot, 34th Parallel, and Unlikely Stories.