Two Poems: ‘The Masterpiece’ & ‘The Stars’

The Masterpiece

Unwind her spine.
Spinning faster, a jewelry box ballerina.
Charge up the teeth of the ladder.
Charge admission by the square inch.

There’s something maddening about the silence.
The mechanism ceases its music,
and she rotates in a violent dream.
There’s paint on her clothes. The iris was an accident.
Red across her lips like a kiss that never crystallized.

Unbind the manuscript.
Pages fluttering, feathers never ink-dipped.
Charge down a collapsing hallway.
Charge your mind for the madness.

 


 

The Stars

It all comes back to the moon.
To the glimmer
of billions of lighthouses
transposed.

Her little hands
build worlds of origami
and piano threads.

His knees too brittle
to scale the stairs.
His mind
soggy with grief.

Snowfall fragmenting
his memories.