SurVision Magazine
An international online magazine
that publishes Surrealist poetry in English.
Issue Fourteen
WENDY LYON
In Praise of Delirium
The ice floe on the river is crackling
into two; a thin, gray snake of water
hisses between the pieces and no silence
eases anyone, anywhere. Now furious,
lean birds scrape their wings against the air,
their shadows thud against the bedroom wall,
and my bones grate against each other,
crushed by fever's weight—even as a pillow
lies complacent and plump at the foot
of my bed, even as it's dropping
feathers slow and heavy, one by one
they hit the floor with a thud and disappear
even as the floor begins to groan.
But the fat of this pillow won't melt away,
it endures as dread comfort to kick,
an immortal taunt though its feathers drop
fever-soaked, relentless, down. But let
the river crack, the birds' wings scrape, the floor
break from feathers' weight—all of it would vanish,
if I did. This delirium be praised.
Wendy Lyon lives in Connecticut. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Across the Margin, The Anthology of Magazine Verse, Yearbook of American Poetry, Amelia, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Greensboro Review, Grub Street, The Literary Review, Manhattan Review, Moving Out, Poetry Northwest, The Round, Small Pond, and The Windsor Review.
