PIHM Poem: The Goth Girls’ Gun Gang
Originally published in The Dread Machine in June 2023.
The Goth Girls’ Gun Gang
she passed a bullet from her tongue
to mine.
it tasted like blood—
metallic, sweet as the lilies lining
our sisters’ desert graves.
she placed a pomegranate on my head,
shot seeds into bone-dry air
and licked the juice from the corners
of my bloodshot eyes.
I cut her hair into a batea
drank whisky under the stars
and picked gold flakes from the scars
adorning her scalp.
the four of us left,
turned scorpions out of our boots
patched up holes in our knees our lives
and headed west
chasing the sunset over
and over
and over the horizon
again.
Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Massachusetts, on Pocumtuck and Abenaki land. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Vastarien, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nightmare Magazine, and others. She is the flash winner of the 2022 F(r)iction Spring Literary Contest and has been nominated for the Bram Stoker, Pushcart, Best of the Net, Elgin, Utopia, Rhysling, and Dwarf Stars awards. Her Bram Stoker and Elgin Award-nominated poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, is out now from Android Press.