I have seen the soul cave in
Imploding; lens burnt hyaline
Seen the wings upflung – God’s eagle
Tesserae shagreen; seen
The flare-tailed phoenix shuddering;
Ripping orchid-breasted dream
Splitting spleen and coil and lung into
A shell of lies where
Love and truth; meant and unmeant
Polychromize.
ST DOROTHY
Who is this man
Cruel mouth tipped like a cesspit
To catch the unwary?
It is the Roman Inquisitor
Who takes flowers, accepts apples
From the sunflower-faced girl.
She tends her father’s gate
They argue and
He loses.
He jokes but does not forget.
They will meet again
At the World’s End.
ADVICE I’D GIVE MY DAUGHTER
Do not fear –
Much is wasted
Cowering against the moment.
Some things are
Forever. Value
Yourself; you are one
Of them; this space
Is crossable;
I did and you will.
Thirdly, I’ll be with you.
No matter how
No matter where
I’ll be with you
And your daughter
As you do it.
Constellation Vulpecula
The Little Fox
Cuckoo’s darling
Sphinx-lipped hound stink
Springs a balance tipped by weakness
Of the Mighty. Doing
The Master’s dirty work
For centuries now
You should know your way around.
Sidereal astromancer
Always smiling – Bone poor
A busy employee
Avoids the traps of the past.
Someone else’s coffers you’re
Lining now you hypocritical
Suit of someone else’s armor.
Andromeda: The Chained Lady
She won’t complain
Trailing chains like widows weeds
Foci of dissonance
Her suffering draws us to her
Hub of sky.
Somebody owes somebody
Something here, that’s plain.
Wristbound, poor Miss
Bredwell, accomplishment
Depletes her
Energy enrages her
Passion disgusts her
Unfree, a natural born
Victim, a true
Lady.
JOB DESCRIPTION
Do nothing.
Be no one
Scrub the spaces in between
Your life will be measured
In others spare time.
I say those have failed to pass
Who failed to wash
The scuts of infants
Failed to harmonize the
Broken breathing.
Who made garbage of the children’s eyes?
Newborns drip a cream more holy
Than the sacraments. They are born
Little calliopes
Singing whalesong.
Incendiary at one
Stargazer at three.
Who failed to pass?
I pass on eternity and
A taste for taking time
Coaxing twisted trackways
Into light; slow the world by hand
If necessary; slow enough
For the children
To get on.
CAPITOL GHOSTS
Pale Guiteau
slants his disappointed child’s face
downwards; the better to study bloodstains left
by assassins more accomplished than himself
who required benefit of anonymous surgeons
specially qualified for skewering
the muscles of the mighty.
The guard who saw him
claimed also to hear demon cats
and could not be relied upon.
these portents once were matters of
congressional dispute; now
no matter; caught within the marbled lurch
of history, victims
of the uninspired mad;
those who pursue the corpse from whom
the ghost escaped. He haunts our history
like the villainous barber who sings as he slits
both throats and wombs, a pure tune
some say, picked clean of tragedy
which only the dying hear.
THE WITNESS
You say you love me for myself but
I killed that bitch out of jealousy
Now as sole survivor
I’m the only clue.
She was the confidential client
I left to clean up after.
In the furnace of morning I lie
Between darkness and wolfcall
Charges taunting me like
unborn children:
Ask him to marry you, mommy!
Ask him! Ask him!
This messenger ticks –
Impatient watch –
Anxious to be set going.
Some new clean thing lurks
Along the border of
Imagining.
My
Severing fire of
Intent cuts your leash.
Be off! Don’t
Rely on me; we’ll select
What we want from
Who we are. You hunt
And I’ll imagine.
Only.
Such loyalty outlasts
The stinking viscera
Of self.
Without Angels
The sky would be
Impenetrable
No mimicry to mirror
Us
Celestially
Backless vertebrates
Aswim
Amongst the clouds
Must be invented.
Even lava
Formed faces at first
(We know this)
Pushed out puckers
That spat like mouths.
Birds fly like angels but
It’s difficult
Their eyes separate to
Points of seeing
We cannot drench with self.
And the reptiles!
Such slow uncles
Shave-brush fins and boxer stance
Their beats too slow to follow.
We midwife angels
As in the fairy tale
That children so admire
The coins appear as quickly
As we wish to spend
Rushing us through spheres
Of carousels of
Space
To meet ourselves our
Unspent ghosts
Coming
Back.
Alysse Aallyn 