Would she have died?

Would she have died?
Hidden in the line and largely held into her
everlasting reign of dead mountains.
Would she be the proud queen of under dug,
floundered in her bed of rock?
She would be nailed onto wooden cross pillars
and growing under green roller blinds. Was she
dead, but more than that she was the disconsolate
undermining of the moss?

And then? Would she scorch with her pin and lodge silver
maggots in crystal?
The crawling sucking swarm festivities of a digging court.
Where she took the horrors of Corylus Avellana and cheering
servants. To turn
and wallow till the grizzled underlayment.

Who would she be? Bitten by toothless shells
with fading halves of uncomfortable wheels
where chalk and phosphor surprise her holes
softly flooding hurting her measures.
Would she change the shuffle or leave foam
on beams? Would she tremble of all its veering dust
and let them open?

Did anything move? That she struck life.
A mole's way replete gripping towards the light
Windows of mold, an earth journey, a sandy corridor
Breathing in whisper archways.
Lightning and there was crawling in empty flight: she. Her
holes blocked and forms hang immoderately refined.
She moved and eyes closed.

Would she have died? For the sake of waking.


31 lines

Note ▼

2nd place The Newbies + Open Poetry Contest JUNE 2016
Featured in "Mystery Newsletter (August 17, 2016)" .
Published in Poetry is a Mountain (2019) Anthology, edited by Kevin Watt