Revision
Bane
Validation
I cut you with a snowflake in June,
stamen of an orchid in November.
I did the impossible: I felled you,
then went out dancing. I said
you never made me come, or feel, or cry,
or even think much. I ignored your texts.
I answered the door in a negligee,
called back the hall to your best friend,
shut your hand in the door. I burned
your letter unread. I turned you into
a plum, then sat you in a bowl too long,
bit you, spit you out, and turned you back
into a man. And you love me.
Would
that I could hurt you, so you could.
I am sitting in a full lotus one
thousand feet in the air and the whole
world has come to hear me speak. I float
up a podium of lapis. Even the children
hush without prodding. My voice could
unlock any safe-box of compassion,
disintegrate bullets, open roses early.
The sky has lovely acoustics, and I
am casting no shadow, so the sun touches
everyone, and they are tulip beautiful until
my single tear
plummets
like a glass Cupid’s arrow
and before I can speak a salve, they
are pierced by silence, the sun shifts
behind me, ashes,
ashes,
I
fall,
anchored with
love.
Dreams make profiles headshots, shadows flames:
on a day I felt inconsequential, mine
took me to an interspatial warehouse
where once we fell asleep, the world would end.
Some sang lullabies, while others shook
shoulders, urging revolution. I kissed
everyone I knew, pressed my cheek to a vault
where the world’s art, music, and poetry
gleamed as pyrite in the sun. A woman said
this vault is empty. Your last job is to fill it.
I raced around collecting workers’ hands,
mute voice boxes splintering to sing,
visions from the most invisible.
Anything non-middle. I didn’t question if
I was worthy of this task—I only had until midnight,
I only had until none of us woke up.
Stacia M Fleegal is the author of Anatomy of a Shape-Shifter (WordTech, November 2010), Versus (BlazeVOX, 2011), and the chapbooks The Lines Are Not My Friends (second place, 2009 Červená Barva Press chapbook competition, 2010) and A Fling with the Ground (Finishing Line Press, 2007). She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2009 and 2010. Her poems have recently appeared in Mud Luscious, Fourth River, decomP, The Louisville Review, Skidrow Penthouse, Pemmican, Blue Collar Review, and The Kerf. She is co-founder and co-editor of the online literary journal Blood Lotus, blogs on poetry for the York Daily Record www.yorkblog.com/Versify and also does editorial and digital media work for the Los Angeles Review.
