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Self-Portrait with Mirror and History Book
by Cass Garison


​I know what they did
to people like me
 
in other lives. Shoved us somewhere
windowless: ceiling begat
 
sky, dark grey streaks
across its surface begat
 
clouds. When he gave me pills
for the first time, dropped
 
them like baby teeth
down my throat I envisioned
 
my death: a martyrdom,
the first of its kind.
 
Shackled to the earth
by my wrists I sprouted wings
 
like a swallow’s only
sharper: sliced the wind
 
until we both
turned to flame. I am in the room
 
again, pulled like Christ
between bedposts. Birds
 
stretch into a ribbon
across the evening. Remember
 
when I cut the tip off my finger
and called it the moon?

Picture
 Cass Garison has work published or forthcoming in River Styx, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art Online, Washington Square Review, Salamander, Nimrod International, and others and is currently a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal. 

Read More...
Intruder by Cassie Garison
Summer 2019

ISSN 2157-8079
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