A Bureaucrat’s Corner

Artwork by Emma White
Artwork by Emma White

cut                    to                     W/S*

 

straight cut, straight-laced, big shot

suit laced with cologne

minus hazy horizons— not receding

 

but maintained by inflamed sinus

sterile dust lining vertical | | | |

horizontal shelves, sheaths of

 

skin filed like skyscrapers

Richter scale & vertigo—a disaster

contained by categorization

 

even when flipped on its head

the paper still stands, but the ceiling,

— varnished slats long                 black—

 

compresses the skull:

calcium ossified to paper

paper to embryonic sap.

 

*wide shot