To the Artist's Page
To our home page
To Peter Magliocco's previous piece
To Peter Magliocco's next piece
Of a Vision in the Anne Frank House
There was something bruised
on your sister's corpse: Her breasts
once milkwheat gold, now shadow-livid
with welts impeccable from flaying.
There was something
in your sister's tomb debauchery stilled,
a sweat-chilled wind
of something not right
in looming hair-branches.
She was not dead
but at fourteen years
poised to live for eternities.
... I was smitten
by inescapable truisms, & placed
porcelain gifts inside her coffin
bearing plant life clot-filled,
amid loam from hyacinth fields.
There was something
in her last look suspended
which said another would take
her growth from there
& to the masses give back truth.
(An uncontrolled sustenance?)
As only a child prophet mired in slumber
could give to the memory of still-born souls.