Photo by Mike Wilson on Unsplash
Every great man has his disciples. It is invariably Judas who writes the biography. —Oscar Wilde
In the mirror, the wooden bust of Christ Nicodemus carved
and Joseph commended to the sea, stares out for reflection.
The foot that has no leg walks near the forest where trees grow
underground, where the hand without fingers shapes itself
a mate of clay and points in the general direction of everything.
It is there the one glass eye shouts aloud its distrust of light;
there the disciples for the multitude of the dismembered gather.
Each agrees to some phantom motion, a ghost pain. For one –
the unspeakable tongue that fits squarely between outstretched toes.
A signature for another, luminous as a tree ring, a flower that opens
before the leaves hang. And for the last, an illusion of infinitely
diminishing size: an arrow that strikes dead center and breaks off
like a kiss. In the mirror, the bust, the hand, the foot, and the eye
all agree what remains is accidental.
Richard Weaver resides in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. He volunteers with the Maryland Book Bank, and is a seasonal snowflake counter (unofficially). His publications include crazyhorse, LRR, NAR, Poetry, BWR, 2River View, NER, and the ubiquitous Elsewhere. Recent poems have appeared in the Southern Quarterly, Little Patuxent Review, Red Eft Review, Crack the Spine, Gingerbread House, and Conjunctions. Forthcoming work will be appearing in Clade Song, Dead Mule, Magnolia Review, & Steel Toe Review (2017).
