October Poem of the Month

I have just finished organizing the MS for what I hope will be my second book -- my first full-length book -- of poetry. The book will be entitled Caduceus; it's all about messages, words, voices, lies, truth, and personas. It has six sections, titled "Lovers," "Skeptics," "Preachers," "Believers," "Metaphors," and "The Voice of God." This poem is the "Prologue" to the volume.



Dramatis Personae

My little heel-wings are not made of feathers:
they are made of tongues. Their voices flap
around my feet, hiss through my veins, and coil
their noisy helix on my heraldic staff.

They whisper I am, I say, making me
play all the characters this writer writes.
I am the dead man on the bed; I am
the bird, the beast, the god, the groom, the bride.

I am a hypocrite, a metaphor,
a myth. If every wing-word was hermetic,
lovers, skeptics, Romans, Christians took
my secret voices public, grew frenetic

in praise of their high places and their gods——
in the end their clamor just might run me mad.



—— Sørina