SurVision Magazine

New Skin


Lives recounted like battle trophies,
stars aligning with fatal desires,
animals bearing human fates,

her talon compassing our circle,
broadcasting dread, our eyes bright
shooter marbles too large to blink –

ghost lovers, earths of different ilks,
the scree of life tomorrow's avalanche
accompanied by admonitions,

the skeins of her words subjecting
tormented souls to her judicial flames,
and salvation or doom.

She sat upon an old cane chair,
her raptor eyes quick to fog,
as out from our skins we crawled,

shadowy beings with horns and halos
parading through worlds ferociously sweet,
our little-mice hearts banging like drums.




Weevils


Their holes have spoiled our meanings,
tainted our light: we collide in dusks
unending, chewed hearts in hand,
bodies mere husks of our true selves.

Gaps yawning in our memories,
faces and places tending strange –
today disappears before our eyes,
tomorrow the only history to be known –

yet here we are, consciousness
lying on their platter and dreams
by porous night sieved and loosed
into morning's black star,

believing in belief: as we exist,
so must unbreachable spaces,
antidotes to hollowed hours,
whole words to set our world aright.




Darrell Petska lives outside Madison, Wisconsin. His poetry has appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Star 82 Review, Verse-Virtual, etc. He has worked a third of a century as communications editor for the University of Wisconsin-Madison.