Sarah Sorenson

ANDROMEDA ON THE EDGE

Andromeda is
dying in such splendor.

Splendor in the dark-brained water below,
gushing that bitter, bitten-tongued blood --
And the night air takes the chafe.
 
The rocks a layer of wafer;
veined mica.
How she palms geology, sciences, thrills darkly
in the discovery of history --
the weighted down back of a heavy giant.

What else is there
in a tower of rock salt, streaked glee, mad,
mad sediment;

The humiliation of fool's gold?

There are only these highways:
Jade scraped snakes.
Foamed, gloaming,
Hitch-breathed.

Streams of spider spit;
The jut and rut of these rubber-mucked ribbons.
They lead towards the sea.

Every mile
dies a salt-breathed death,
Is embedded in those years of history.
If only
one fingernail could scrape one second

of anything,
Maybe threads of her
Tattered loom silk,
of this bad, bad night.

All woven,
the dress is a tight, whale-ribbed wedding charade,
Or else fit for a funeral pyre.

The toss and froth of vanity,
sure, sweaty hand,
Throws
such string-haired promises;
A life underwater
With the heart caught and snared,
Or else eaten.
Every bit of pollution will be the
stench of her lost breath --

These rocks a savior,
A surface,
A road never completed;
How it leads nowhere.

Neptune with a barnacled triton,
A coral wreath, a shark's tooth, a jaw of moss,
Throatful of silt, sodium in the mix:
His sharpened spires
Only stir the grit.

Location:	Fitchburg, Massachusetts
Email:	deadcolette@yahoo.com
Publications:	Pneuma Literary Magazine, Liberty Hill Poetry Review, Poetry Motel, Stirring, Morpho Review, etc.

- June 2004 - Canadian Geese Henka Snapshot of Chief Peter Setate’ket Nicola in Headgear and Kilts God's Glassblower Gentle Warning Andromeda On The Edge If Mary Tyler Moore Had Lived in Los Angeles