Two Poems

scrambled eggs

i

I get out of bed & don’t look in the mirror.
there are birds on my tree in my head
in the garden.

ii

i fist the glass door & flowers open.
a blackbird looks at me
sideways.

iii

her hair is like a nest of baby vipers
dead before they could crawl.

iv

i peel with the left thumb a mandarin
like ribbon coil
& you don’t love me.

v

i reach for you like the hoarse crow
a cup of water.

the reprieve 

i don’t ask to be born & warplanes bomb the landscapes 
of my inner eye. i sleep on my fours, 

piebald, gaze at the milky sky & i don’t hurt a fly. 
there’s a plot between my ears brushed by wind; 

the ecliptic, wistful,  
leans on my window sill. i was a prince 

who played with his soldiers on the beige carpet, 
an act of love—i swiped 

the dust along the skirting board,
disappeared, queered,

like a vision, my referentials disestablished
& when you tell me, potentially,

everyone’s an artist, a visionary, an architect, 
a dinner lady & 

whatnot, the mare bolts in her sleep 
& there’s no moon & the terror is agony 

& the night is blood red 
like a blindfold, a feathered heartbeat. 

                                today, mr blackbird
smashes against the pane, the door-frame, the wall 
after which he is songless.

i stretch my hand like god & he sings again,
it is autumn, it is spring, 

                                mayflies by the minute 
are living. i see w/out compunction the exhibition 
of micro-death, bodies anonymised.

                                when i shut my mind, 
i hear it soft like gas & one of us is laughing
                                                                on the inside.

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Mark Prisco’s poems have been published in BlazeVOX, Mayhem, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook, and Minarets. He was guest editor for Mayhem in 2021, and has had book reviews published in Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook. He will be the featured poet for Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook in 2025.