EYE OF NEWT

I was larval.  I dreamed myself
downstairs in pj’s, still in my coma.
Bach, he said, and I lay next to the radio.
Dark amber spread through my girl-brain.
Eye of newt already nestled there, an egg
glued to a twig.  My pale, bespectacled brother
set me on a leaf and watched me fatten.
Franz Kafka, he said, and my new, long feelers
brushed the wall.  Girl Before a Mirror
was tacked there, torn from Life,
her twin pear-belly worm pink
as my own.  Half curled, half crawling,
I burst through skin after skin.  Art, I said,
and my wings fanned slowly open.

(Source: Blue Hanuman, by Joan Larkin, Hanging Loose Press, 2014)