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Cemetery One Nighter

Paul Corman-Roberts

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It isn’t the name she told you, the name that isn’t her real name but the name they told your friend, heartbroken back in the pizza joint you hit up where you first squeezed her thigh under the table out of your friend’s sight, neither of you knowing she was death, happy to clasp your fingers back & place them further in after wine cooler, weed and cruising the family plots and mausoleums.

And it wasn’t long till your friend realized you were going home with Death and not her but it’s all right, it’s okay “we were hitting up someone else anyway” who also happens to be death’s voyeuristic neighbor because Death never moves out, at least they don’t move anywhere without their voyeuristic neighbors anxious to bear witness to the ritual hungry fingerful grasps, tongues spilling out, sheets ground to wrinkles.

And if you’re lucky some of that stays with you when she puts your body down on the ground where it’s cold with tiny, muted footfalls crawling up and down your spine, scraps of your sleep made on death’s floor.

And when she sincerely sings about you coming to visit again is how you know she knows it will be the last time, one way or the other.

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Playlist song: The Surf Punks, “Wave Spy”

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Paul Corman-Roberts is the author of the graphic chapbook The Sincere (Libran Apocalypse, 2022) and Bone Moon Palace (Black Lawrence, 2021) which was nominated for the CLMP Firecracker award. He is a co-founder and co-director of the Beast Crawl Lit Festival and is known to occasionally keep time for the U.S. Ghostal Service. You can find him on Substack at “Paul’s Substack.”

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