Death's Bright Approximations
I'm the one who never forgets the curse of it, un-metaphorically;
what is imposed on the senses. The scent of lemons I'm obliged to love
for their bright portraits. An overlong pause on a grey avenue
to listen to dedications, meant for another. The venomous self,
searching among mixtapes. In the bass of an instrument I want to burn.
That animal whose cologne has expired. In a damp cabinet, in the middle of this life.
As if we could measure such an indeterminable thing and what radiates from its sickness.
Is this the dreaded centre now? If we project how many more years in a scientific manner,
it is still art: a measure of fever cast on a piano; a gallery you run to for refuge
when fighter jets sound off a war; the glass mural falling on my own child.
His other lover's Hallelujah.
Here's the cancelled signal above my bed. The Earth's roundness blistering.
Death has an approximation I celebrate in the circumference of ritual.
Another bloody monthly period. The smoke of the citrus candle hanging in this room,
body-shaped. I am the artist enduring the mirror. The erasure that makes all of this literal.
Vikki C's recent work appears in EcoTheo Review, Ice Floe Press, Ellipsis Zine, Nightingale & Sparrow, Black Bough Poetry, Acropolis Journal, DarkWinter Literary Magazine, Boats Against The Current, Mythic Picnic, Fevers Of The Mind, Across The Margin, The Write-In (National Flash Fiction Day), Loft Books, Lazuli Literary Group, Origami Poems, Jerry Jazz Musician, Salò Press, Igneus Press and other venues. She is the author of The Art of Glass Houses (Alien Buddha Press, 2022) – a chapbook exploring the liminal landscapes of memory, heritage, art and the metaphysical. Her first full-length poetry collection, Where Sands Run Finest (DarkWinter Press), is scheduled for Spring 2024. You can find here here: @VWC_Writes
Коментари