hangs rigid on its chain from the unstrained hand of the cam girl.
her
pose places iron
before
reality;

her teeth are white veneers over a sugar-ruined core.


she is the tortured priestess, hiding
in plain sight as
           a
           demon :


she, the healer shaman -
but her bones have been
    scattered                too                       far


for psychic-cartography
to reach




i, the last king of the
dead :


my lungs, full of
spit and
deadlocked breaths between these quiet actions in a
still quieter
  war


/fallen
  into the hive heart-center,
caught and drowning
in the



cistern of discontent  .