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.

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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.