Mapplethorpe
after Robert Mapplethorpe’s Self Portrait, 1980
half youthful, half emaciated,
he reflects the epicene
and the languishing.
his head is all shock and flurry;
his mouth a toothless brevity.
half Madonna, half Antinous,
he reflects a decadent flower
both wilting and transcendent.
his eyes suggest a having seen,
two eternally startled interims.
a princely pauper
whose aspect reflects that of
a parched orchid culled
too soon.
published in Hive Avenue Literary Journal
Lethe
i am a winged thing flailing,
driven into my bovine body, and
back into my savage infant soul.
in the beginning, nature
conceived another deadweight,
and i find myself stillborn.
i am forever waiting to
open my welkin eyes
and outwit the brute.
i want the earth wrested from me;
i want no longer to acquiesce to
the stranglehold of gravity.
i am forever looking forward to
eclipsing the round
seared by fantasy.
published in Hive Avenue Literary Journal
via crucis
i.
to behold paradise
god must be heaved up,—
for to become seraph
is to gouge the eye out.
ii.
always at one remove
is to be found divinity,
otherwise effaced
by twin identity.
iii.
riven apart
by mimetic sparagmos,
man is condemned
to die on the cross.
iv.
to shed the serpent’s skin
is but to reiterate its meander,
for conquest precedes
the bind of surrender.
Krystle Eilen is a 22-year-old poet who is currently attending university. Her works have been featured in Dipity Literary Magazine, BlazeVOX, and Hive Avenue Literary Journal, and are soon to be published in The Orchards Poetry Journal and Young Ravens Literary Review. During her spare time, she enjoys reading and making art.