Heaven and Hell
(Hieronymus Bosch, in scrambled haiku)

a peacock, three Eves
with four apples up on top
dark twins flank six white thighs

*

a woman torn asunder
by silver spiked saw
all breast and sinew

*

grown from fish gums
rabid incisors, dark claws
how we are hungry

he is the keeper
of dead birds, their ocular 
sockets oozing death

*

a man with a platypus bill
points to the words on the page
hooked crooked nose, a flashlight

*

the gourd drums, 
the cockroaches
the sloped ukeleles

*

butterfly wings  
salamander feet
a parade of devils

*

pterosaurs and frogs
sail through the constellations
feathers like silk, hook web flippers

*

slippery, sex stuffed with
moonlight, cock and buttock
cuffed, cucked, drowning

*

the pigment is cracking
the bonfires are crackling
the witches are cackling 

soot, smut, braided angels
fingers in her sex, mouth open
drowning men are swimming

*

owls, line laundry,
hooded heads and varicose veins
stingray, crab, a basket of wolverine


*

the lamb of the world 
in a tunnel below the loam
the keys to death and hades in her hooves

*

sail away 
sail away 
sail away

*

you are the doctor
at this table, this emptied heart
these fractured bones

*

my ears and my feet
have been severed by arrows
hell's sharp blades

*

the water is green life
and your wife's skin is red
blood, trickling from struck branches

a murder of crows
streaming from the crack of your ass 
from his, gold coins.

*

a cauldron, an oboe, 
a man vomits into a portal,
another man is born from blue.

*

three fey faces feed
on blackberries and pigs
a martyr is hogtied and stung with arrows

*

this is the house of empty barrels,
and an old and spooky widow
eyes glued to the window

*

the bridge to nowhere
the ladder to an overpass
that slides back down to earth, or hell

*

a reindeer is a centaur
a fig leaf is a burial cloth
a bovine jangles goblets and red silk

*

the gooseberry orgy, naked 
circling the giant spiked fruit, mouths open, 
dice, vice, stockings, and scorpions

*

the bull ruts until the woman's thighs 
fall open and she cries with relief 
at entry

*

a nun screams at puncture
porcupine quills, claws of skunk
sex with white teeth and a mask

*

plucked bird, polka dotted fox hijab
pewter vessel of bitter water
a turtle, a crystal ball in his rubber throat

*

there are ladders across hell
the miners and their shovels
hoist volcanic ash, ashes to ashes

*

the arrow, the bullet
they are aimed at the swan
watch how her wings span death, then life

*

frail white eggs glow
among cymbals and harps
so long ago, the garden

Lorette C. Luzajic

Lorette C. Luzajic writes poetry and flash fiction inspired by visual art. Her works are widely published and nominated. She is the founder and editor of The Ekphrastic Review. She is also an internationally collected visual artist.