imitatio dei by Meridawn Duckler

 

Image | Luis Felipe

imitatio dei

When I want a world, I want it yesterday;

at parties, I’m awkward but believe my absence would be noted.

At work, I’m assured nothing arrives some way

though I have no confirmation, only the great jade ocean

slipping on the surface of the world like a marble

the sky, a blue canvas over the world rim

or a jar of school paste under the blue-lined pages trembles.

No one imagines me as a child because what never begins

can’t end. But if I was a child, I was one who made things.

I made my eyes two light switches, lying in bed, 

sliding trees off my fingertips, wearing planet rings

starlight reflected off my fingernail bed

on the street where I’d hidden a hard charcoal heart

under heavy rock: this was how diamonds started. 

Previously published in Anti-Heroin Chic

© Meridawn Duckler

Meridawn Duckler

Merridawn Duckler is a writer and visual artist from Oregon and author of INTERSTATE (dancing girl press), IDIOM (Washburn Prize, Harbor Review), MISSPENT YOUTH (rinky dink press), and ARRANGEMENT (Southernmost Books). She won the Beullah Rose Poetry Contest from Smartish Pace. Work in Seneca Review, Interim, Posit, Plume, Massachusetts Review, and Ninth Letter.

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