SUSAN MAURER

MIRROR MIRROR

I'm sorry
Forgive my greed
I've been dead most of my life
How you learn to hate, dead so young
Snow White locked in glass
And frozen in a scream
Would surely do the same

Now the truth is out...

Sleeping Beauty's hair is dyed
She sleeps nude upon her side, which rises and falls, falls and rises
The hair upon her head is blond or
Almost blond—the other hair—(still there?)
Dark brown or almost black
A MOST SEVERE COSMETIC SLIP

Mirror, mirror on the wall
Do princes come through this undergrowth
I am sick of the dream
I am sick from this sleep

Up floats, up floats what next?
Wait now, wait...
Snow settles in the crystal ball
It's mortal Pandora who
Spreads her legs and opens up the box

Here is where the pain is
As dark as menstrual blood
Here the ache and endless loss, the flow
Of tears, of sand through spread hands
(To pierce, to cry, to catch the bird alive cannot be done
White wings which flap within a soundless room
To bump, to thump against the window pane)

The gleam, the silver pool which breaks and forms again
The structure of each tiny piece to mend
Into its globule, shiny as a mirror

Mirror, mirror on the wall
Do princes come through this undergrowth
I am sick of the dream
I am sick from the sleep
 

Susan Maurer's work has appeared in more than 100 national and international literary journals, including American Voice, Virginia Quarterly Review, Gare du Nord and in anthologies such as the Unbearables' Help Yourself and Downtown Poets. She is a three-time Pushcart nominee and performs her work frequently at venues throughout the United States. Her chapbook, By the Blue Light of the Morning Glory, was published by Linear Arts.