livid aurora
A student suddenly stands up,
poised and erect with impenetrable boldness
as if all her bones in her body
had rigidly fused together.
She loudly heralds to the class
that her glorious modern masterpiece
is in the writing,
far distinct from
the torturous monotony of Dante's Inferno
or the dullness of Camus
whose pithy aphorisms
were to be recited by rote in class.
She tells us she's paving her own path forward,
despite all her papers looking like confused treasure maps
and her test scantrons looking like abstract art
but like a jigsaw puzzle with only center pieces,
not the type to fit a frame.
Like signals from the cosmos, her ramblings are merely noise.
When a neighboring pupil
not even lifting his head up
from the makeshift shelter he had crafted
using just his bony vertebrae and wooden desk
inquires as to the utility of this novel invention,
she declares curtly,
"because I can."
I capitulate to the irresistible temptation
to inform her in an equally curt
but nonetheless lenient tone:
"even Satan still knows God."
hexed talon
echo arrow
fallen dirge
radiant shard