When Stars Die

COHORT 4

it’s half past midnight when the anthem 

to america’s newest star scalding our lips 

flickers in black & white. what we wouldn’t do 

for fame. spotlights drunk on scenes 

for those we flesh. a girl seized by the angles— 

& edges of her scars. Glazing 

our eyes & the television splutters. cue the applause. 

harlot or starlet? hollywood asks & critics answer 

no difference. only naked salt in the body that used to kiss 

silence until the audience sighs 

beautiful / synonym: disposable. watch

quietly: billboards blinking, evidence of

the pretty little liars we’ve become. once, we stripped 

senseless, bared skeletons

to shadows in the sky. how they splintered godless

behind the director’s cuts. hunger autographed

along barbie-bred bloodlines—of all

the lives we haunt: we script this one an aching

that swells seafoam in our chests. because

on this altar of smokescreens & smiles

we are nothing but beloved. like beggars we bend 

to the first offering of praise, 

an atrophied silhouette of drowned-out dreams 

misplaced as home.

cursed in moving pictures. so we surrender

in the camera’s clenched jaw

where even the ghosts have lost their hold on grief.