The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Phasing
by Sheikha A.

The sun sails in sanguine shadows
on the coast of her lower jaw – land

on the rim of her eyes is a set of twin wells
where her retinas once gleamed like agate

so pristine of clout or blood, visitors
would imagine her the benevolent Gaea

resting on a mass of water like a body
made for beds: for anything that grows,

for everything that grew – bore like fresh
womb. Her veins fester and spray out of

her mouth – showers of salt; the sky rains
through broken hymns – hymens – the star

that makes fire appear like crystals in snow,
its heat so intense, blazes of Hades’ chariot

rip comets into comatose constellations;
that star burns pollen in pistils mid-bloom,

scalds scalps – field-follicles – the green air
meant to sustain; she browns like beauty

meant to entice, her dimples glow as pale
flecks on tanned cheeks. The exotic burns –

thirsty fire – she burns water and lands
and the sky’s ice fall as diamond-tears,

their properties malignant, spreading
as silent gas until the science of it is

abolished, the white pages of invisible
ink, the glyphs on walls dating to ancient

tools, the premonitions that turned to
predictions, and her war-speckled eyes

smiling the sinister truth – their deaths
will be formless; only gradual melting.

Fiction © Copyright Sheikha A.
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from author Sheikha A.:

Nyctophiliac Confessions:
Poems by Sheikha A. and Suvojit Banerjee

“The night is cold enough to inspire poetry,” says Sheikha A. in her poem, “Reading My Bones.” This is the basis of Nyctophiliac Confessions – poems that are introspective and luminal, poems that require a certain amount of silence and space to be fully formed and appreciated. Reading these poems, I imagined that they were the kind of poems that assert themselves unbidden during a bout of insomnia. (A nyctophiliac being someone who loves the night or loves darkness).

Nyctophiliac Confessions is the 17th installment of Praxis’ chapbook series and contains twenty-six poems written by two poets, Sheikha A. and Suvojit Banerjee, interspersed with abstract paintings by Robert Rhodes.

Available Here!