Strange Fruit by Sam Rasnake

Strange Fruit by Sam Rasnake

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,          
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck

                                                                           — Billie Holiday

Her voice sounds like
the moon must look
through trees in winter,
and when she sings,

the wind blots over
the burned out nebulae
of her head so no one
can see her fall

until the song is through,
until the song does her in.
She sounds like scars
that bleed over the moon’s face,

leaving their cold reminders
for fanciful pairs of eyes
to pause from love
just long enough to take them in.

            – first published in Pudding Magazine