Last Communion

By /

by Susan Molyneaux

Raw and unflinching, Last Communion dissects the relationship between intimacy and violence with surgical precision. These poems prowl through urban darkness where desire turns predatory and every touch leaves a scar. In this twisted cathedral of noir, confession booths become crime scenes and altar wine mingles with blood.

Each piece maps the geography of obsession – through morgues and bedrooms, sanctuaries and sacred spaces – charting territories where killer and victim blur into a single desperate choreography. This is poetry that bleeds, where shadows fuck brick walls and stilettos drill holes in midnight’s membrane. Here, every murder is a perverse sacrament, every seduction a profane ritual.

Susan Molyneaux transforms noir conventions and Catholic imagery into a deeply personal exploration of power, death, and desire. Like a detective’s flashlight cutting through incense-thick darkness, these poems illuminate the savage beauty in our darkest urges, creating a collection that is both confession and crime scene, both autopsy and unholy communion. In these pages, even prayer becomes a weapon, and every altar holds the potential for sacrifice.

Buy Last Communion online, or at your local bookstore. And check out Susan Molyneaux’s literary fiction novel, Glass Hours.

Last Communion – Excerpt

Garden Of Fatal Promises

Through poison-garden nights, they wither—
love’s petals rotting in mercury light
while my carmined mouth drips confessions
onto tear-salted sheets. Each promise
I plant takes root in desperate souls,
blooming black beneath their skin.

Fog coils like spent cigarette smoke
through this cemetery of conquered hearts.
My stilettos pierce wet earth like stakes,
marking graves of fools who drank
sweet venom from my silver tongue,
mistaking cobra-sway for grace.
 
Under corpse-light moon, I cultivate
my deadly bower: curves like nightshade,
words like belladonna berries crushed
between willing lips. Their lust feeds
my garden, each betrayal sprouting
thorns sharp as broken vows.

Watch how hope withers on my vine,
nourished by midnight’s keening choir—
these lovers, preserved like pressed flowers
between pages of my black grimoire,
forever kneeling at my thorned throne,
crowned in roses, drowning in lies.

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