Mimicry

 

She stoops 

to worship Mimicry,

old, borrowed and 

belly-full of 

what has already been

                     

                      the start and end 

 

of ideas. She rewrites

Genesis with a stale bible; 

a tea-ringed, deadened 

flower press,

flecked with aged 

blossom. Her pen

 

fixes on an 

Upturned Adonis,

sets on 

pale dreams which won’t bruise, on

words that will never 

 

                             breach walls 

 

with a bright birth. 

She burns life into dust.

She makes it glow 

with more light than the Tuesdays 

she spent with her love

and His loveless lines,

 

                              whose start and end

 

are pages mocked in her mind.

Those amniotic sheets

 

                              reach 

 

for a space in an afterlife, 

 

an afterlife crowded with

old laws and flawed logic:

 

Her lips drink the blue milk of Muses;

Her tongue,

                       that bronze length of language,

 

Is statuesque, then flaming, 

then arthritic.

Her mind deals in double deaths:

                                 Her memory in mitosis.

 

Words by Catherine Cibulskis, art by Sasha LâCombe.