electric shadow

though i am arrested by imagining
her aura’s ghostly peacock plumes,
i am not in love with my image—

it is something that trails behind me
like billows of smoke,
filling the halls with ancient spirits
it is a mirror’s reflection that mourns
like a strangled cinderella myth,
that must linger at the back of the ball
so as not to offend her caricaturesque sisters,
forever mad with their own inventions

though i am strung up like
phantom meat on heaven’s rack,
i am not in love with my image—
it is tucked away into pandora’s box,
away from neon hands hungry for mysteries

despite the feathered stroke of the veil
upon the mouths of people who have drunk
the acid-laced moon from a vial, drunkenly,
i am not in love with my image.

still i trace its outline with chalk,
its bent body collapsed at the crime scene
like i am a detective whispering into the dark,
breathing life into shattered glass slippers

***

null moon

some swear that the moon is hollow,
a sly government operation, a dugout for aliens

some say her shifting faces are an
eyeshadow palette of light,
that we can put the moon on like blush
and curdle like milk wearing her half smiles,
reflecting her shapeshifting innocence

and still some say that she controls the tides,
menstrual cycles, and the desire paths
of delusional moths

they say that we have never
landed upon her surface,
for she is so dizzy with lack of gravity
she could not bear it

but to me, her painful weightlessness,
transfigured by everyone’s eyes,
is a metaphor, an ode
to a ghostly velvet hallway lined
with shattered mirrors
that i cut myself on
whenever i am wandering in the dark,
a prismatic angel collecting dust
and leaking unreflected, haunted syrup,
trying my best to be honest
when no one is watching

and when i rise from the dead to meet her there,
i burn up like Laika in the atmosphere

***

allegory of the cave

earth is an orphan and a drunken mother,
beloved and fractaled,
with her gentle violence intravenously
dripping through time’s prism

here where dinner is always late, breakfast
always laced with the lingering stain of acidic rain,
we will paint the walls of caves in our image,
we will brave matter’s hot and hairy impotence
and the spectral fire will crawl on its knees
like a hungry disease,
causing its wars and its belligerent marriages
towards oblivion’s boundless love

earth has a pounding headache from the night before,
and it will be beating for centuries,
creating bitter vengeful gods and vibrating saints alike,
so we must be very quiet, and try not to disturb her;
we must listen to the ghosts
always combing the air’s hair,
whispering of the wound’s bright halo.

by Mila Sherman