A Mask Called Nothing
by Amy Pence
So we enter the dog days—summer
its bedraggled undergrowth, feasting
insects, spiders spinning, unspun.
Everything swarming to the grand ticking
surface: verdure & verdant—a plentitude,
identity leaks from our faces, a carnival
of exiles: subversion, ecstasy, anarchy,
apathy, masochism—listless and rogue.
Then finally, “nothing”: its jade eyelids
around sockets, skin textured—
wind in the bestial unknowing
genuflects to an embarrassment of days.
Unloosed from the Dark, a lowly coming—
all the names unleash their quiet.
Amy Pence’s collection The Decadent Lovely will be published on November 23 by Main Street Rag. Recent poems are in New Writing, The Oxford American and Many Mountains Moving. Fiction is online at All Things Girl and Storyglossia. Her exploration on the phenomenology of Emily Dickinson is forthcoming in The Writer’s Chronicle. For more, visit her website.
qarrtsiluni 
“…a carnival of exiles…Then, finally, ‘nothing’…” I like how you sustain the tone of indiferrence yet deep foreboding. For me, a well-crafted poem I dream I could write. Thanks, Amy!