painted with lemon grass, a horse hair brush.
Virgin Mary of placid brow
enameled and central
like a train station, a throbbing heart.
Leafy chisel of lead candlesticks
made for a girl’s first communion.
Bathroom robed in the Roman grandness
of white and grey marble.
In the afternoon’s shadows
is a church aisle
crazy with a lover’s fervor
competing with utopic hedges
and blue-blossomed Spring outside.
The French nostalgia of a wood desk
lured into provincial charm
with a crystal carafe shaped into perfume
even as it shivers with the moonstone river
of night’s remotest lights.
Two cut-glass tumblers beached on a silver tray
invite respite from the Indian haired pampa.
Europe nods and preens from wall to wall…
A monstrous thing from hell
scabbed like a knee wound
totters across the bedspread,
directs cunning antennas
at the Virgin’s forgiving features.
By Diego’s swift hand
the demon is taken off the bed
and thrown into the abyss of a sewer.
...Stephanie V Sears is a French American ethnologist, free-lance journalist, essayist and poet. Her poetry has been published in Aoife's Kiss, Iodine, Poetry Salzburg, Nimrod, Cha, Third Wednesday among other reviews.
