Nick Antosca The 2River View, 7.3 (Spring 2003)

The Declining Voices

A million sighs subside
and ingots of silence lie stacked miles high
in an island warehouse,

while the proud sea wanes and heaves
on all sides, its pale vitreous waves poignant with the brine
of dissolved ideas and delirium.

And a million bridal smiles are dyed
the icy shade of nuclei which have died, wilted, dried
to tiny ring-like husks inside amoeba cadavers,

because brides die easily and eventually,
or they devolve into humanoid husks that flake away
like silent, desiccated seahorse corpses, weightless.

But smiles and minds that sigh are dissected,
sliced like ripe tomatoes or eyes and delivered liquefied in frost-clawed vials
to neatly dressed
androgynous buyers.

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