Prodigal by Michele Madigan Somerville

When the clock strikes, the masks are delivered.
I pause in a doorway, a shade,
a champagne glass in my hand.

Station stop: Build the pyramids.
If you must petrify,
think: cornerstone?
Have an appetite.

Maybe Liz Taylor
graces us with her presence.
On one of her digits,
a blinding iceberg gleams.

A Roman soldier at il Colosseo
poses for a photo,
growls “I’ll kill your boyfriend.”
(Grazie)
Just don’t let the feather-helmets
break your legs.

Who even knows
whether this is anything?
This thing we built in a day
its climate characterized
by Latin bathtub vocalics
and echo ravines of utmost concern.

Trevi Fountain. Brooklyn Map, a dress
from Butterfield 8. One thing is certain;
the invisible surface of the moon is visible,
and the night is lousy with stars.

Once you come to know all dogma
is metaphor, the green spark of now
noses upward. Standup
soul-singers, come ye swift
revolutionary like revolving
doors. Mind the gap.

Eat it, Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Props to Ganesh. Have trunk will unravel.
I’ll be dead before you get me.

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about the author:

My poetry has been published in Hanging Loose, Mudfish, The Nervous Breakdown, Mad Hat, Puerto del Sol, 6ix, Downtown Brooklyn, Eureka Street, LiveMag, Brooklyn Review, Purchase Poetry Review, Big Time Review, and Quarto. I also write essays and have been published in The New York Times and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. I teach in New York City, and I am an avid painter.