In 1994, Veruca Salt and Astronomy Offer Her A Way Out
A circus elephant tramples her trainer to leave captivity.
Lorena Bobbitt leaves her husband’s penis in a field.
John Wayne Gacy leaves thirty-three bodies in his yard.
She drives aways and wonders how he will react
when she leaves him. With the punch & gasp of the needle
hitting Uma Thurman’s chest? Or with the wailing Why?
of Nancy Kerrigan clutching her knee? She makes
her decision as she shouts along to “Seether”
on the radio. No, she was not born like other girls——
she grows snarl-toothed, resolved, stops cramming
the scream back in her mouth. When the Hubble
telescope confirmed the existence of black holes, she found
the right excuse: the forces they exert on one another
so strong that no love could ever survive that burning.
Grudge
The rumor started years ago, young bodies
around a fire sharing joints and beers
and lies. A crow listened from its perch
in a nearby elm, drawn to the glittering flames,
to one melodic voice that wove a story,
but the bird knew the story was not true.
So the crow followed the liar for seventeen years,
cursed his every step outdoors, diving toward
his head with a loud caw that sounded like
Wrong! Wrong! Even now, when the man sees
any bird, alone or at the park with his children
or his wife, he cringes, thinks about his lie
that crushed a girl’s grace, that set her on a journey
to alone, how she hid herself from a world
turned cruel based on his telling, how he never
apologized. But this was not enough for the girl.
Older now and full of the strength that pain
can bring, I lure more crows to the window
with trinkets of silver and stone, bid them
to follow as I walk each night. Each morning,
he finds black feathers on his threshold,
searches the trees, listens for the screeching.
Donna Vorreyer is the author of four poetry collections from Sundress Publications, most recently Unrivered (2025). Her poetry, fiction, and essay work have appeared in Ploughshares, Cherry Tree, Poet Lore, Salamander, Milk Candy Review, Pleaides, Harpur Palate, Booth, and elsewhere. She lives and creates in the Chicago area, curates and hosts the monthly online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey, and is the co-editor/co-founder of Asterales: A Journal of Arts & Letters. Her favorite revenge stories are Kill Bill, Vol I and II and Hamlet.
