Sunday, March 1, 2009

Jason Arbegast: Calvary

Calvary

A demon-being waits
beneath a moist stairwell
in a musty, mothball basement,
with machete fangs
and crude, oiled fur,
glittering
its jade eyes
and brigand teeth
like a rapist
in a minatory midnight moon,
rejecting our Will,
turning us against us,
to guard a second stairway
descending to the Being
that which we might become.

* * *

Graven

The forgotten stone
was once chiseled,
but like a talcum tale
age whittled
at the inscriptions
on its ivory face
swallowed
in tattered grass
despite the keeper’s efforts.

A neighboring statue,
sculpted and finished
to a linoleum sheen,
eclipses the sun
while the keeper,
with hair cycling
through a white-scale rainbow,
fends the foliage,
ignoring yesterday’s
achievements,
laboring,
never noticing
time’s slight smoothing
of refined cuts.

* * *

~ Jason Arbegast a graduate of the creative writing program at SUNY Oswego, with no prior publications. This is his first appearance in Elegant Thorn Review.


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