Erinn Batykefer is an MFA candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she is the Martha Meier Renk Distinguished Poetry Fellow. She is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Good Girl Erinn Batykefer You are stupid when it comes to cliffs, always standing too close, disaster on your breath like booze. The liquor ad’s subliminal curl of smoke, a sword or skull warped in the glass’s warm glow— these are aimed at you. Death is a bit bloodying your soft mouth, a jockey lashing your flanks to ribbons. You go for it every time: the boys who could have been sweet if only; the highball; the exhilarating leap, thoughtless of landing. Your mouth opens on the glass’s mouth in a soul kiss again and again. Are you playing chicken? You seem to expect something from an ending besides the end, order another spur to the ribs, neat, just to see what it’s like, just for kicks. What you forget, in the thrilling salt and lime of death’s bite, is that you are good. You forget you would die.