Gypsum Girl
The gypsum girl is translucence.
Her powdery touch slides off
the skin, refraction of a shadow,
opaqueness in cubic dimension
arrived on the palest sunbeam,
circling the world counterclockwise.
Her feet are slippers of chalk
cast upon the dark matter
made from the world’s first
act of evil, zinc oxide covering
the charred measure
of deceitful potent stars.
Her curved spine is sacrifice,
blanched ivory and made
to express the thin blades of pearl
found upon
the ambitious soul of artifice
at the moonrise of belief.
Her jaw is milky titanium
filled with molasses and lies,
the warm, burning capillaries
of a false prophet’s tongue
exposing truths stolen
from the grip of divinity.
And her hands,
her pallid, infertile hands
we’ve all felt the tickle of
her transparent claws on our shoulder
usually in the night,
but never when we most expect it.
Woodland Pond
Through the stray ebb of night,
swirls of black water form her
in a meager grove
of orange-leafed trees.
She studies the bracken and reeds,
looks past the embankment
to figures standing in the distance;
the man in the straw hat
leaning on a grey fence
talking to his daughter.
In a few desperate sentences
he speaks of things to deny or embrace
the endless sky
the empty earth
ghosts of the north country
conspiring with fire.
The girl listens momentarily,
begins to drift away
floating through leaves
and tresses of moss
alighting on a small shoreline—
folding in, turning back.
***
Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He lives in Crystal Lake, IL, USA with his wife, Vickie and daughter, Sage. He is a three-time Pushcart nominee and a Best of the Net nominee whose work has appeared in more than a thousand publications.
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