by Tony Brinkley
In the Mirror
I am a brown face
Without a mouth.
Then, eyes without
A head or neck.
I am a road
Swirling curves through
Mists and trees bent
In awkward shapes.
I am a white-tailed deer
At a birdfeed—mouth
Unable to nibble corn
Enclosed by mesh wire.
I am a house
With toothy panes—
A roof of slipping slate.
I am a window—closing.
I am a floorboard
That whines, groans
Under the human weight
Left on all things.
I am a woman,
My scream earsplitting,
Running backwards,
Silvery distance closing.
Mario Duarte is a Mexican-American writer and an Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Fish Barrel Review, Huizache, and Penumbra. He is the author of poetry, To the Death of the Author, and short stories, My Father Called Us Monkeys. https://www.facebook.com/mariojackduarte/ https://www.instagram.com/marioduarte995/.
Tony Brinkley’s poetry, art and translations have appeared recently in Collateral, Trafika Europe, Ana, Nashville Review, Exchanges, Neologism, Poems In Translation, Bombay Review, Pictura Journal, Blue Unicorn, Merion West, Reverie, Viridine Library, Rumen, Soul, Last Leaves Review, Lover’s Eye Press, Miserere Review, Consequence Forum, Jerry Jazz Musician and Antifa Literary Review. Before retirement, Brinkley taught literature at the University of Maine. He is the editor (with Keith Hanley) of Romantic Revisions. He is the author of Stalin’s Eyes and Gomorrah. A chapbook – America, America – and a book of images – Icons of War – will be forthcoming in the next few months