FORTUNE-TELLER

FORTUNE-TELLER, by E.L. Schmitt:

 

A fold of painted cards
across a rune-scribed palm.
Inked in black and red,
she tells his future nights.

Across a pampered palm
nails skitter, slip and show.
She tells his future now
in swirls of breath and song.

Eyes skitter, slip and sting,
blind in the fire-lit tent.
Swirling in smoke and song,
fate looms black and bitter.

Blind in the fire-lit tent,
the crone reveals her hand.
Fate’s end bitterly near,
he reels, he leaves the seer.

Smiling the veiled girl holds
a fold of painted cards.
The fortune-teller waits,
inked in black and red.

_________________________________________

E. L. Schmitt’s poetry has been published in Four and Twenty, Sagebrush Review, and Three Line Poetry. Her nonfiction has previously appeared in Monkeys with Typewriters and is forthcoming in The Rectangle. A recent graduate of The University of Texas at San Antonio, she currently spends most of her free time applying to M.F.A. programs and recording the history of Fred, a small planet located at the end of the universe.

 

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