by Pam Yve Simon
Peeping Coffins
In the spill and mayhem of a metropolitan/ I’m left with nothing now/ a mere lantana/ stretching her lovely growing/ like a phoenix from the trashes/ flailing single-armed to the sky/ now gun-metaled and garbled/ through which we zoom like escape velocities/dressed in civilized ambitions/ unaware
she squints her perianth bell-peppered/ bleached by neon bulbs into yellow parchments/ scalded and sunk in a tainted meander/ copper sulphate dogs emerge stiff and ailing/ from a deserted factory’s disaster/ a choking spring sulks/ on a secluded bench/ tapping its feet on fervid grass/ crisp like insects’ legs entombed in amber/ gasping
the lantana shudders/ her anemic stem wearing to a stub/ though she dreams of corollas as colossal as plaza umbrellas/ someone snapped her arteries the other day with slabs of insensitive stone/ coffining a fringe-limbed frog alive/ a logo of his losing species and then the last of his kind/ at night, she sleeps to a raucous song from a murder of crows/ till the murder of crows
on terminal trees upheld like naked bronze figure trophies/ billion lungs suckling up to them/ perhaps, having adulterated the world with her beauty/ where everything spews venom but the snake/ the lantana flakes
like a burning forest
Shweta Ravi (she/her) is a teacher and writer lured by both, the simple and the spell-binding. Her narratives are frequently imbued with ecological and cultural rhythms. Her work has appeared in The Cabinet of Heed, Melbourne Culture Corner, Ayaskala, Commonwealth Writers and Women’s Web. She was shortlisted for Strands International Flash Fiction Contest -12 and longlisted for the Retreat West Micro-fiction contest.
Pam Yve Simon believes in love and art; she believes both have the ability and obligation to reveal the awesome complexity of the human condition. She earned her bachelor of arts in English and American literature from New York University. Say hi to her on Twitter @PamYve.