Murder by a Window by Shirin Swift
Sketches capture the sun's passion,
its frantic last minute recollections
inflamed as a bird's golden chest all puffed out after its bath.
Laughing Doves and lost shadows wrestle
swords of rising silk lettering the white frame;
who else is a gradual witness of this process?
Invisibly, the handle of bronze, tinged turquoise,
arches into a knife-blade
plunges into the transparent flesh - deeper still
scathing the beating foliage and palpitating vines,
the bruises and pustules of Morning Glory,
lilac bloodline of sky leaking back up to heaven.
The driveway's spine of prehistoric ferns
twist into a reclining, sphinx-like pose.
Every lesson in me listens to the wind
whirling through my bones the area being cleansed,
my body indistinguishable from gashes in rock.
01/26/2007 Author's Note:
I tried to record the sun's fall but could not write fast enough with pieces of me ready to be amputated.
Posted on 01/26/2007 Copyright © 2025 Shirin Swift
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