Medusa
       

I have always loved the translucent life,
the concentricities
blooming around me
in a ripple-ring of nerves.
If I let my shadow cinch in,
whatever the soul is
billows out like hollow silk.
Needle by needle, I plume
into the rays of an underwater moon,
climbing pure and poisonous
in the drift of marine snow.
Nothing hangs quite so empty.
See how my mind skates,
vain and clear as melting ice.
It contracts with a heart's pulse:
selfish, selfish.
I glide savage, a stinging chandelier,
a brain trailing its nettles
through the anemone swell
and forests of stiff sea fir.
Malice swarms through me in a surge.
I know that flare, that bitter reason.
And I will float and flower
in my season.

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Copyright © 2016 Sarah Holland-Batt All rights reserved
from The Hazards
University of Queensland Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission