This poem is not for a sensitive audience.

Andalusian Christmas Noir

They found the naked body of a Roma girl outside the locked door of the Royal Chapel the day after the rare Granada snowstorm. Her throat had been cut into orange slices. They think it is a sex crime because they found spit-out pomegranate seeds at her feet. The killer hung her golden necklace with cross upon the icy branch of a nearby orange tree. The main suspect is a heavy-set priest named Pablo. He was the last person to see her alive, and they say he always looked at her as if he was going to devour her leg. I do not have faith in these officers. They are still searching for the murderers of Lorca, finding orange peel clues inside the mouths of empty fountains. And so I walk alone at night near the murder scene. The green neon signs outside the pharmacies spread through the snow, infesting it with the glow of middle-20th-century radiation, the final scene of Kiss Me Deadly. Green, how I want you green, Lorca said. I hear footsteps behind me. They are not the heavy, solemn footsteps of a priest, but the light flamenco dancer steps of a young woman I know. Eyes of cold silver, Lorca said. I do not turn around. Her knife will kill me either way, in all directions. She moves hidden in the accessible eternity of rare Andalusian snow. Eyes of cold silver, Lorca said. She killed the Roma girl, I know it now. She stabs me with the strength of three matadors. I die in the green neon snow. Green, I want you green, Lorca said.

Chris Pellizzari, who also writes under the name Chris Capitanio, is a poet from Darien, Illinois. His work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Counterclock, Allegro, The Lake, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Main Street Rag, Gone Lawn, Softblow, and I-70 Review. He is a member of the Society of Midland Authors.