the mask, the vipers beautiful
“… she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing." Hélène Cixous
look at her straight, and give her back her pleasures, organs
territories of the body
three not really two + one and none
appendages her selves the dreadful guardian
coraling invasion
the pregnant sea assaulted
illuminated border
—after Blake, Plate 39
o, rose
only when you fall
you see him
fat, still
hungry, ravishing
the leaf
his muscled
being
contracting and
relaxing
arising
from the crimson
petals
erect
the bud his bed
o, rose
bending to the thorn
clinging to the stem
Kathleen Hellen is the author of The Only Country was the Color of My Skin, the award-winning collection Umberto’s Night, and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Letters and Commentary, Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, The Massachusetts Review, New American Writing, New Letters, North American Review, Poetry East, and West Branch, among others. Hellen has won the Thomas Merton poetry prize and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. For more on Kathleen visit https://www.kathleenhellen.com/.