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Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Mercury
by Sheikha A.

He feeds on energy –
calls himself Black

Widow; he can invert
to the feminine inside

of him, be ambitious
like swift, cunning legs

of a graceful arachnid –
an architect of bones,

keeping them fresh
for nest-building.

He can be submissive
like serum of justice

on lips of a feminine
scorn-lashing magician,

black like his blood –
black like infinity –

black like death on stilts
walking through dreams,

inflicting scars on necks
for posterity. He can crush

spines with an elegant swipe
of his palms; he will name

it sleep-paralysis, sweet
poison in his pelvic spool,

black like tongue of midnight –
black like birth hour of a devil.

He sprays lustful acid –
act of predation fulfilled.

Lunging bosom first
he spirals flesh firmly,

watching in decadent relish
until the moon-shine of bones

peek like a ray of light
through vapour residue

of skin, sinew and other
disposable trinkets; the soul

he sucks like marrow; the soul
he burns to silver, hot and viscous –

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!