Melanie H Manuel

on watching scream (1996)

we gleaned this love through patience
& a fuckable tension any knife
could cut through, how we might
compare to the tragedy of billy & sidney.
how he is her undoing, the blade to her
throat, the gun to her chest, the very hands
around her neck as she claws to stay alive.
their eyes locked. their love nothing more
than a throughline toward want. although she
survives, he does not. when you said, let’s fuck
like we’re in a slasher movie, we laughed, &
months later, we did. on the hardwood floor,
three double shots of patron silver in, scissors
to my throat, for a moment, until we kissed
ourselves heaving, you held me firm, feathered
kisses across the bends of my body, my throat
in one hand, the other clasped in mine, as if
to contain our floating—this undoing.

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Melanie H Manuel is a Filipina American poet. She attends SDSU for her MFA in poetry. She is a recipient of the Prebys Creative Writing Scholarship, the Master’s Research Fellowship and, most recently, the Sarah B. Marsh-Rebelo Scholarship. She is the Production Editor for PIOnline and teaches in Rhetoric and Writing Studies. Her work has been published by Third Iris Zine and North American Review. She has forthcoming work with minnesota review, Porkbelly Press, Zone 3, Los Angeles Review and Grist: A Literary Journal of Arts.