Arabella // Lisa Liu

​Arabella you miserable beautiful unghostly witch
Arabella always talked like she had a cigarette in her mouth about Manifest Destiny like it was an old ‘90s band ironic but not really like she had seen them in concert
Arabella wore dresses that looked like spider-web doilies stitched together by a wizened crone out of Cinderella’s nightmares
Arabella had no time for shit-talkers, she’d laugh them straight out of her brown teeth town “this is no place for children” she said
Arabella never swore 
    on the graves of any of her grandmothers but her grandfathers she said they were fuckers who deserved it
Arabella romanced household objects like a dollar store witch costume riding a vacuum cleaner into the sunset
Arabella was always the bass line
Arabella couldn’t tell the difference between yellow-jackets and yellow-suited exterminators
Arabella said she wanted to swim in the pools of mansion boys in khakis and Ralph Lauren polos and be a daddy’s boy’s momma’s girl
(except she hated her momma)
Arabella loved Duchamp and said dear Marcel was after her own heart since she pissed on boys and drank from their fountains
Arabella didn’t know Matisse from Magritte but she knew how to tease regret until it stung like drugstore rubbing alcohol but that’s a good sting that means it’s healing
Arabella I fucking hate you
Arabella was from another age but any other time would have slapped her skinny pale ass and sent her right back to our age sorry there’s no place like home
Arabella was a Tin-Man and her voice was oil on grating steam-engine-joints, makes an old man feel pretty damn good, honey
Arabella had hair like spiders legs
Arabella wasn’t a rebel because she was just like any of us except a little more loud about being sad
​

Lisa Liu