Usurpers

I.

The mirrors on their wooden hinges had been placed

with insides out. A malediction spiraled down into a drain.

Clouds from slipshod artistry mummified illusions of appearance.

Blood came in whispers from her mouth

and her tongue was a lash for the penitent

while she intoned the sacred name of Legion.

II.

A knife pared the unholy black from metal corridors of human hearts.

Great grey birds with souls like doubt circled three slow times

before believing a burned tree stump to be a throne or shrine.

Her lips parted like a crimson sea and plumes of ash and terror

made pirouettes in the sun.

The Sons of Heaven could never have been ambitious for her hand.

The air is not of earthly kingdoms, nor will it consent to be chained.

Have all the others perished in the lightning blink of hatred?

Is it instead that we have fabricated a world so like the old

that its artifice shall not be discovered until the time of dying?

Surely neither can be true. Surely the graceless pestilence of jealousy

still lies feline behind each celestial glare upon a windowpane.

Once in the dark of December’s first day I killed Aeolus

and kept his power for my own.

She laughed and serrated her teeth against my shoulder.

III.

Anna, your hair the whip of flame, the light falling

from a rainbow onto the bone on the outside of your right wrist,

a tear in the seam of your shirt placing coy shadows for my eyes,

for you I have become loathsome in the sight of the living.