[Issue 2022.60]

‘Degenerate’, Avra Margariti

Illustration © 2022 Josep Lledó

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Vestigial wings
Atrophying pseudopodia
& motley degeneration
Of mixed metaphors

She says I am loved
Down to my last cell
My innermost speck of star-stuff
But I am feeling too evolutionarily
Functionless
To get out of bed most mornings

She says she’ll build me a nest
Of femurs & fossils
Each their own kind of miracle,
Madness

Will you preserve me
I ask, after I am dead
The child-bearing bones
I never asked for,
The lumps of flesh
In all the wrong places?

Yes, she says
& vows to sculpt an altar
To my beastly beauty.
Whenever votaries leave
Profane offerings, the pangaeic dust
In my mouth will turn
To timeless gold.

© 2022 Avra Margariti

[Issue 2022.60]

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