Meta Sylvia

[just mercedes]

Stroke by stroke she rows into darkness
towards an island unmarked on maps.

Words distract her with incense and light
or clay and blood. Space fills with language
no one speaks, vacuum, furnace, not only these;
white noise like sheets over mirrors.

In the mirror an inverse stanza, outlined
in obscurity; a scribble, a drizzle of soot –
not frozen in space but flame-nailed
onto the white sheet page.

She schemes to carry this precious chaos
to the island in a suitable chalice. Stanza
carves the carriage, the cup, chaos,
the mirror, and the island.

Big game roams here. She tracks the greatest,
captures him, writes his wrongs - steals him,
all his desires. Exhilaration drips from her pen
like spring water.

She’s captured him alive, tethered him
between parallel lines; now she milks him
in the desert, bleeds him carefully,
cautiously, until he’s
condensed.

Then she launches her flesh canoe
towards the island
all over again.