Sara Femenella
MARY SHELLEY
The second moon inflated like a lung,
naïve, organic, a quickstep’s heathered 
horizon, peals of astral-ardor sung
above the noir, numinous she weathered
that storm, thank you. So arresting and how
it hurt when it hurt. The gathering gale
of father, redshift Tuesday on the prowl.
An off-key, minor diatonic scale,
a daughter’s parlor trick, she lay muttered 
bone-cold in a watery tableau, bloom
affliction mulled and wooly, kill shuttered
away in two blue chambers, fears flood and flume
the ruins. The gamine’s keen and boozy urge
limns motherless aesthete, autumnal dirge.
THE STORY OF THE EGG
Born an arctic circle of cautious
physics, it’s a closed system of calcified
brides and orphans, chitinous and whistling
northern lights.  It is Oedipal, sanctified, 
a black wing slick with membrane.  
If a palacial city, handsomely baroque, 
dressed in snow, twinkling with carriages 
and holiday parties, then it is the waltz, 
the stroke of midnight, the glittering 
champagne.  Love doesn’t have 
to be real.  It’s the actual abstraction 
of call and response, the soloist’s standing ovation, 
the flowers at the door.  If every biography’s
unsung accolade and greatest mythology 
glows amber in a coal dark, 
wreathed in ideology, then it is the proverb,  
a disciple to Petrarch’s descent, the Laura,
kneeling in a curved prayer.  
What gratitude that every confession, 
every hunger, every mistake 
from this one small thing, and that you can hold it, 
organic, opaque, cool and weighty in the palm 
of your hand.
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