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The Colossal Flowerhorn

owed to Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror”

Again, the nightmare begins:
A son clamped tight to each foot
Pulling him down under
The brute waters of the river;
He gasps,
Imagines he's drowning
As his wife stands on the bank
Shaking a canoe paddle.
A colossal flowerhorn blooms from his nose;
He spews blood
Imagines a dozen hooks dangling
From his mouth.
His eyeballs slide out
Searching the reaches of a netherworld.
Each eye-socket a window
Of some monster's soul.
His pink fins twirl and become knives.
A yellow finch pecks at his first son's ears
A green finch pecks at his second son's eyes.
He cannot feel his hands
Asleep on his pillow behind his head --
He snores but does not wake
Until morning blasts of sunlight pierce the window.
Stumbling to the bathroom
Nearly falling over the calico cat
He turns on the shower tap
And is relieved again that
The liquid is water and not blood--
A quick glance in the mirror,
And the colossal flowerhorn blooms again from his nose.
He is ready to shower now.

also titled "The Terrible Fish" #3 from a nightmare sequence in Turtle Woman & Other Poems