Richard Magahiz

Cinq petits dessèrts

 

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cold and still

 

sensor overrange condition trapped

 

against the flare

a manipulator

slews the hazcams

 

in silence the cosmic sphere hangs like fruit

 

rock dust rains 

as, laughing, the boy takes

a singular tread

 

Abruk through Kurba

 

for these past seven sols

Spring

and still no birds sing

overhead the China Sea 

  blooms red

 

there'd been something going around

 

eight billion headstones  

of course  

each one machine-set  

 

A fun guy

 

the summer sun had curdled into blood

and fled as though she'd been accused of fraud

 

and then

a knock

 

I used to trust my fellows, used to dream

one kind deed would return unspoiled to me

 

I threw

the latch

 

he wore a most expensive tailored suit

his syllables induced a sticky sweat

 

not sure

from where

 

around him a scent of far-off ashes clung

I listened to the sound for far too long

 

and then,

just what?

 

a thunder glance has turned my tongue to stone

deprived my reeling brain of oxygen

 

it was

too fast

 

a portal smashed and burnt within my skull

some rugose presence squats within me still

 

bereft

of scales

 

he showed his teeth to rouse me from my daze

the way a lifeless portrait shifts its eyes

 

what has

been done?

 

and since that night I feel within my bones

this husk of Yuggoth took what was my own

 

and now

me too

 

The irresistible

 

  it is a matter of devotion

of not unleashing the feeling 

of tending your heart in a bottle

of toting a belly inside-in

of living the only possible truth

 

  with amnion and chorion cleft

she has only the very little time

she has grasped every future need

she fetches it from the dank cellar

she does what she does as she must

 

  the veils part one June day

so grey and so cold the fat would melt

so the buzz of one hemorrhagic mosquito 

so very much not how you might want

so bad it was buckets of poison bad

 

  thus she perseveres

with the keening sealing the sky

with isolation and rage blooming

with the only way a pillar of fire comes

with jewels of purifying blood

 

  then simply and quietly

we decant the fraction from one to two

we relearn how to unsplit the atom

we see thrones on thrones on thrones

we deny the impulse to understand

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