Vigilant through windows
and cracked sills,
she is the insatiable witness.
Lacquer-eyed and looming,
her lungs gloom the glass
and flakes of dead paint
spot the stillness of her limbs.
A slick hiss of cicada arcs electric
through the suburb,
the day as pale as a panic attack
and unreal with ease.
Its casualties cringe by,
grim and middling,
like old jokes
in ill-fitting skin;
with tricky Icarus,
soft in his sarcophagus
absolving in the rain.
She’s a doomed and complex
inflorescence
who outgrows this garden asylum.
Spreading as
petals into a dark dissolve,
her pupils unfurl
like mutant blooms
and she prints out shapes
with their blackness:
If it wasn’t for the warm reply of her pulse
she could mistake herself for the radial lace
of morning moon,
or a figment of your imagination.
The filament of the lightbulb
watching over you,
troubled charmless at dawn,
too pure to feel the stars
narrowing to exception
through the wonder in that
hot tungsten eye
gazing down at you from above.
The language and sweep of this, much enjoyed (not that any poem is to be ‘enjoyed’ once, and then lobbed with the ice-cream wrappers and milk shake containers into the bin), ‘her lungs gloom the glass’
The communication aspect of poetry is an (arguably) necessary function of the process, so it’s much appreciated that you’ve taken the time to read and comment on my poem – thank you, Peter!
the cicada description with the unease of that paleness— together electric, holographic, unreal…
the diaphanous captures of being…being anything at all! spooky-lovely, Sommer.
Thank you! I feel quite fortunate that I have the inclination to create something from that intense human anxiety and some of the things that come with it. Poetry feels like distilling it all down to its essence.