Queenpin by Ivy Schweitzer

Shit, she says, hoisting up her sleeve.
These were my life lines.
The drab visiting room
                        lurches.
Her tracks are varnished paths,
punched over and
over.

I feel every prick and
plunge of vein
that slam
the wheedling brain.
On the wall
a beach scene
of dune grass silhouetted
by a setting sun.

Inside, the queenpin
surveys her realm
staring down
a dark helix
of need.