April

Her small body is propped into a leather chair, disgorged from hyacinth haze, 

Muffled about by the frothy rise of her blouse’s collar is that

Terrible face, overlayed and masked in movement.

Debrided snarls about the mouth, thick cleaved burrows of skin they are

Look-lowering, the concave of a twisted keloid,

Graven grimace frames teeth detached-white,

Lift of ventriloquist’s trap above the warm animal palate.

Eyes swallowed into a spasm of fractures, and there: loose set, swilled-brown and dim, 

There, that centre, a cosmos in that absence.

The fault lines split and crack away, illuminated into a smile – 

Crashing into the frissons of the making-break of a chrysalis,

Rushing, radiating full the fecund combed-earth rims,

Brimming ley-line scores, banks swelled to bursting

From temple to temple to seat that deep central cleft, that lidded, asymmetric overhang.

Rising, a crushed glove hand, seer-ing over cool crystal.

Blind and smiling.