Small-Time Rapture
        —after Mary Ann Samyn

                                                                June

Dear Madame—

The turning point was thus:

A mystic came with a styptic gaze, a nervy mercy in the dose
of his testimony, unabridged.

Something winged and patented beat
beneath his skin. A trapped thing tapped.

I felt it during the laying on of hands,
the diagnostic and the blessing.

We grappled with predictions.

Friction and heat revealed the myths
born of fluctuations in the blood,
the membranes storing memories.

I watched the fine figure of his finger
trace the outline of my escape, a hatch

only I could open, the hinges rusted
and needy. The trick was to find

the correct grade of oil, which luster
could bracelet, slip, and seep into
those rough grooves, produce a loosening.

My sluggish ways no longer an option.

The answer is hidden in the rhetoric
of perk and pluck loud-throated.

My goal, my joy, to decipher the glossy reward.

—Your Detective

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Copyright © 2013 Sandy Longhorn All rights reserved
from Barn Owl Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission