Mimesis

Mimesis

Your riverbed eyes

Bring from gut strings

Chords not of love,

But of witchcraft or madness

And prisoners starving out in the cold.

You know that I know

That I know that you—

You only appear

To resemble yourself,

Tubercular angel, indifferent foe.

You float just across there

At fingertip reach,

Placid, banal

And assure me of nothing,

(if nothing had substance).

But then flits the beast

With serrated teeth

In waters too shallow not

To show shadow. 

I know what I see, for

Careless, you turn,

With air of flirtation,

Deliberate, glance, and

Tell me

You’re there.

 Shelley K. Davenport

  

Shelley K. Davenport lives and writes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has had flash fiction pieces published by Everyday Fiction and the Eastern Iowa Review, as well as a short story in the upcoming COLD HARD TYPE anthology, “Escapements."