Death Letter

The barrel stave was riven where she drank.

Knots nestled, she lay on the cooling board

a trestle made of evenly sawed planks.

I’d built a home from hosts of best oak planks.

She shuttered in a shack where the wind roared

amid the rain-made ruts from which she drank.

No keeping count of all the pints we drank

or of the ravens that above us soared

only the chasms that we crossed on planks.

Our shaking rattled all the bedstead’s planks.

The nails worked loose and left the fibers scored

and after, from a rusted pipe we drank.

Since first kiss, it was poison most we drank

yet never lips turned blue, until she soured

and ended dead upon a dreadful plank.

The joists of my house groan, as ships that sank

drowned lovers who remained embraced on board.

right next I lay until her bare flesh stank

heads nestled on the rough grain of the planks.

Johnny Payne is Director MFA in Creative Writing at Mount Saint Mary's University in Los Angeles. He has published two previous volumes of poetry, as well as ten novels. In addition, he writes and direct plays in Los Angeles and elsewhere. His plays have been produced professionally and on university stages.