DEATH MASK
Katherine L. Gordon
To still all feeling
reflect no symptom of disquiet
be smooth as much-caressed marble
that has never exuded blood or tears,
eyelids stitched against compelling sights
chiseled nostrils forbidden to flare
lips set in never-kiss never-comment
surface serenity.
Inside the skin crawls.
MARTIAN MUSIC
Katherine L. GordonB>
Red dust sings in the blood,
miles of star-slivered space
netting us back
as salmon in a fiery sea
floundering in little tin ships
to find our beginnings,
ancestral graves
in dried red beds.
Our loneliness keen
as the genocide of earth
inflames the obsession
to rejoin anything of source,
lost beauty and meaning
the anthem we need
to survive.
COMET IN MARCH
Katherine L. GordonB>
Black March heavens
comet-gash livid
no equinox mercy after midnight,
wolves singing harp-throated obeisance
to the fire in the sky
the ancient pattern broken.
Fiery tail and pulsing head
streaking defiance to all the chains of order
that grid the globe.
A roving renegade
messenger of frozen dust
to dust proclaiming:
for a moment escape the destined,
blaze!
And be.
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