Sex and Murder Magazine

By Michael Shorb

She talked to boys.
They thought she might’ve
kissed one under oaks
where the road bends
small Turkish town
clouds looming brown
unkneaded bread
they weighed the girl’s
fate under a bare kitchen bulb it was
more than family honor
could bear, him with a sickly
wife already, son in the army,
now cursed with a daughter
going bad heading for
who knows what vile scenes her naked
on someone’s bed, the moon
a disk of judgment.
They dug the grave chamber
beneath the chicken coop
dig it deeper he admonished
neighborhood men helping
make room to lower an old
red chair down with
a sobbing and broken girl
blindfolded and slumped over
who hears the harsh words proclaimed,
the excited clucking
and the heart’s freight train
as the dirt rains down
the darkness gathers
the father’s glaring expression
echoes Abraham’s as he
led his boy up the mountain
of slaughter, an old god of stone
smiled, appeased, this morality
of scorpions and ravens, born
of harsh desert light and blistering wind.