Emma Hyche

kevin bacon death triptych

I.

{The keywords summon it to me}

{“kevin bacon death scene 1980”}

{I skip through the prologue}

{you know what I’m here for}

{42:22-

{fountain}

43:03}

{full movie, extended cut}

{extra bloody additions}

{stream online instantly}

{area woman discovers a gaze is like digging a scab—men hate her}

{you better close the door before you see this stunning simulation}

{she’s online and seeking a man over 45}

{chat with singles in your area}

{in this addictive online game you’re allowed to make your fantasies come true!}

{make all your scars disappear in seconds with this miracle fruit}

{she will surely appreciate this clever new trick—try it tonight after dark}

II.

The post-coital male body
performs rare rite of tenderness
When kevin bacon exhales smoke
his pulse thumps in the right places

The point inside his neck resists
the building of surface tension
before the pierce, the vector
of force, and when aorta
embroiders lacy pattern
on the wall and his jaw snaps open—
it’s like he’s doing it
to himself

He is here for me
to make
him suffer

The blood-jet
from the inside bursting—
hollow tulip stem inside
becoming outside
if the arrow makes it so

Alone and arrow-pierced,
the joke is too easy
Killer’s palm on his forehead
keeps the flow steady
Jet stream onto bunk bed—
from (throat furrow)
about (voice box)
between (tendons)
across (blood)

III.

The obscene is merely
that which cannot
be unseen.

Steeple pierces
the throat of the sky.
Gutters swell,

windows dilate.
Corona of purple prints:
scattered constellation

like necklace or noose.
I chop carrots—
woody sweetness

wets the board and every one
is a windpipe and my thumb
is a vector for severing

Moon face drifts in windowpane.
Its contortions ghost mine.
Contorts under gaze into pain rictus.
This is no doubt the finale.

You are here for me
to make you suffer.

The Lead Detective

If you held me underwater, or if I held myself.

*

I started to think what traces I litter—detritus of presence in the body’s absence. I expel multitudes.

*

I started to picture my Lead Detective, his hat and nose.

*

I left my skin cells under pink blades in the shower and clogging the drain. I left my foot or its ghost in the mud by the shore of the lake. My toes or their ghosts left depressions in the dirt.

*

If you stacked me in the closet, or behind a wall, or if I stacked myself.

*

I left some blood somewhere and it smells like the old pennies when it dries.

*

The Lead Detective creases his brow.

*

I left a thumbprint in soap film. Saliva drying on the toothbrush.

*

If you cyanided the water supply, or if I poisoned myself.

*

The Lead Detective snaps the latex and relishes the sting. This is going to take all night.

*

I left nail clippings in the sink’s white face.

*

What’s the worst thing that could happen to me. What’s the absolute worst.

*

A body is a powerplant with lax safety regulations. Toxic flows.

*

Splatter patterns. Splatter expertise. Let’s call in the expert.

*

It’s the boyfriend. It’s the husband. It’s the neighbor. There was a struggle. There was no struggle.

*

The shape of how things should be lays over the shape of how things are like a tarp, like a child’s ghost costume with two empty eyes.

*

Rampant speculation. This isn’t about repression.

*

The Lead Detective has his inner conflict all over his stupid handsome face. He has a loveless marriage at the corner of his mouth and a young son crusting his eyes which are gray with sleeplessness.

*

This is a bad thing, but it is not the worst yet.

*

Are you the one who’s going to find me. Are you.

*

Most killers cannot help but get involved in the search. They’re often the ones that find the body. They’re the ones who volunteer.

*

I left hair snarled in a brush in the drawer. I left hair littering a black sweater. I left hair in the hoods of all my coats. A surfeit of evidence. You could build a nest with this.

*

The Lead Detective trained for this with a dummy.

*

If you held the rag over my mouth, or if I sucked the chloroform like perfume.

*

The Lead Detective fantasizes about the size of my case file. This is going to be a good thumb. A solid handspan. This is going to take two evidence boxes.

*

If you buried me in the park, or if I dumped the shovelfuls of clay into my own eyes.

*

The Lead Detective doesn’t smoke a pipe at the scene but keeps one in the glove box of the squad car.

*

Woman most likely to be killed by someone she knew.

*

Tagged and bagged.

*

How long can you look at it. How long can you level your gaze before the flinch.

*

The Lead Detective wonders at the company I keep. Company I kept.

*

We have reached the very worst thing.

*

The Lead Detective knows the stakes. Knows the first forty-eight hours vital.

*

Escalate escalating escalation—my face but a stepping stone to crime deemed more skin-crawly, more bloody by volume, metric or imperial.

*

I left an eyelash at the site of disappearance, clotted with mascara.

*

It’s never a mannequin you saw that day.

Emma Hyche is a poet and essayist whose work appears in Apartment, LIT, Entropy, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Picnic in the Abattoir was released in 2021 by dancing girl press. She lives and writes in Chicago, Illinois with her fiance and a cat named Dario Argento.