Behind dingy cellophane,

the photograph in the family album

encases me, where I grimace like I’m behind bars—

lips stretched taut across gritted teeth,

eyes plaintive, fixing my father, the resident cameraman,

asking any witness not to believe

the bottom half of my face.

My age, ten,

my hair, mostly brushed, my pantsuit, floral,

a K-Mart layaway acquisition,

my hands, clutching a certificate reading

“Honorable Mention.”

A bone thrown by the school district arts committee,

a pack of energetic, under-employed moms who

anoint the preteen illuminati each spring.

My dearest perceptive one,
how do you know that I am not truly here?
I can be,
or could be,
but this body is exhausting, so
I am coasting in a space
just above and behind my eyeballs
where I don’t have to deal with full body chills
and the feeling there’s a hoard of termites
chewing into my cervical vertebrae at the base of my skull.

^...

It is the age of cyclopean eldritch, of dreams vast and grand
Angels and demons spawn and die, and their bodies fertilize the land
From such wondrous turmoil chaotic empires are born
Their sharp spires rise ever higher until sanity’s curtain is torn
And in the sybarite’s palace whores laugh on parquet floors
While in the narcissist’s castle hags brood behind worm eaten doors
Astral caravans with silken sails make eons long trips
And the wine dark sea embraces all of the Motherland’s ships
The jesters burn the royal library, living in a joke
Their idiot grins cleave their face as they inhale the sage smoke
In the arena the mad monarch’s games subdue the restless crowds
As the girl captures faces with her mirror and reflects them onto the clouds
The spy on their cryptic mission, dutiful agent of dread

...