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Eliot Greene Dec 2013
When the world fades down to this,
A pale light giving only its converse shadow
A mere marionette claiming the small gloom

How we dance when the lights let us stand alone
Shadowless we are without echo or reminder
Clear in the grip of the primacy of solitude

Illumination forces us to see ourselves, mirrored  
These darkened shapes we leave upon the wall
Growing as our days get heavy and weigh down the sun

How these long nights let our shadows
Fill up the great secrets of the world
The small corners we will never reach

And yet our hands unfold, unfold again
Claiming the absence, the empty as home
Filling the soft spots of this world with our glistening gloom
Maritza Torres Mar 2017
I arrive searching at a crossroads
the dense fecund flora around me whispers,

This is a labyrinthine quest

long bark fingers reach out from the shadowscapes
they hand me a stone tablet
transcribed with incomprehensible scripture
I grace my fingers over the stone
the words chime within me,

There is no prize
no obvious winners
only scathed players


the words resound
beneath the fierceness of the wind

If they speak from the soil
they murmur hidden truths


the leaves encircle themselves
in a waltz around my body
and assure me,

You cannot listen too keenly
you may imagine yourself­
a half truth
a projection
that isn't real


out of fear
I rise to the tops of the echoing wood
then fall as the ravenous roots
force me onto a cobblestone pathway
only lit
by the corvine call.

— The End —