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The Mirror Replies
(Yawn of the Noose)

Joshua Copeland

The mirror stabs back,
A reply and a razor,
That I am not the person
I want to be.

The mirror reminisces of vibrant, Technicolor dreams
Disintegrated into skeleton dust,
Dust spinning in whirlpools,
Dust raining on forsaken cobwebs.

The mirror projects a face that
Flickers with self-doubt,
With retroactively aborted revolutions,
With instrumental degradation and finalities without pasts.

The face it gives back to me is worth nothing,
Absolutely nothing;
It’s just there, it just is.
The face reverberates vacuity,
Its mouth stitched shut.
The reflection remains mute about outlines for
Amethyst-bricked palaces
And fortresses hugged by three layers of fierce steel
And golden handrails tracing sleekly marble stairs.

Instead, that face—it can’t be my face—lacks a history,
It lacks a past, it lacks a cursory, backward glance.
Without the past, no present, without the present, no future.
I will be until I quit being,
Until I give myself over to the friction and the adversity
Of The Thousand Step Staircase.

“Everything is wrecked and unmade and disposed of,”
Says the mirror. “You must dream in order to become,
And without the gelatinous fog of dreams,
The noose awaits,
The yawning and knotted loop an eager mouth...
...spine into shards...

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