The Eye Nebula
A
chair upholstered with leaves--
I close my eyes to each leafy detail.
Who thinks I live to offer a throne?
Who
thinks it thinks
a simple confession is
a ponyride to heaven.
And
you, fingering my name,
twirling it like a halo
over the heads of heretics,
I
shed each leaf of you.
I stripped your skin for leather
and left you unraveling, rosy.
*
Five-hundred years ago, an Aztec bride
mastered the art of flatbread, then stopped
the calendar coiling her life.
She
slipped past the hearth
into the blue dome of an atom.
The Aztec calendar slipped
into
gradients of time:
a calendar buried its warriors.
I buried myself in the pause of a clock.
*
The eye nebula
faraway witness
already in the blackhole's grip.
The 2River View, 4.3 (Spring 2000)