The girl he picked up at the Hefner concert

in 1999 has now grown wrinkled and old

with all the hymns to the alcohol

and the cigarettes and a splash of cheap

overpowering scent from a tempting

crafted glass vial can

still leap out like a genie

and make them seem and feel

hot and dizzy and young,

when the booze and drugs

finally kick in; can still tempt

the two of them together

as they toddle back home from the pub.

Poison—enunciated in a camp French accent—

was always her and his favorite. The exotic

stale tang of risqué sex lasting long into the next day

and beyond, if you do not wash it off.

Bella sprays the Poison she has fished out of the trash

onto her wrist and raises it to his nose. Smell this.

Sweet. They fuck. Good as the real thing. Slump

in sleep. He wakes up to her convulsing body and frothing

mouth and dials 911. Not quite feeling himself.

*

Discharged from hospital alone, he walks home and runs

his hands over the foxgloves in the summer hedgerows

in remembrance of Bella Donna picked

up at a Hefner concert in 1999,

now gone wrinkled and cold.