Donna Vorreyer ​
​

Fugue Bourgeois
                      after Untitled #8 by Louise Bourgeois

Meltwater patterns in Antarctica, ground exposed which
should be white. The ground in a garden full of anthills.
Many small guitars that children have fashioned from
tennis rackets. Cellulite constrained by athleisurewear.
Spots on a zoo giraffe, puddles on asphalt, the path of
the wind as it passes through slats of a plank fence.
A plate of half-eaten hash browns in a cafeteria.
Cellular structures beneath a high school microscope.
The aggravation of razor burn. What burns here other
than streetlights and anger? Daffodils or dandelions,
aquamarine pools chlorinated free of algae. Whole
neighborhoods free of trees, only the lines of streets
that dally with cul-de-sac ovals. At night in the windows,
dialogue bubbles bursting with blood and rust.
Something about Jason Momoa’s Orange Scale Bodysuit Makes Me Relive My Mother’s Decline (or All That Glitters is Not Gold And Sometimes Just False Hope)

I watch the end of Aquaman:
The Lost Kingdom and wonder
what the rest of the Justice League
thinks about the king of Atlantis
negotiating with the United Nations
to address climate change through
science while most of them run
around in codpieces, capes and masks
battling supervillains with mutant
powers or evil borne from trauma.
Aquaman sparkles behind his podium.
[Cue swelling soundtrack instrumental.]
​
Later in my dreams I watch the end
of my mother’s life on a loop and
wonder how the doctors missed
the signs of cancer, prescribed
laxatives, failed to pinpoint other
symptoms while we yearned for
answers, made more appointments,
haunted hospital hallways, dutiful
to those we believed knew better.
We ended up praying for miracles,
for a superhero to save her.
All the stars have gone dull now.
[Cue closing montage. Cue Credits.]
I am Told to Look for the Beauty in Everything

​the nurse pulls
an upswirl of garnet, bright
as a pomegranate seed,
into a vial, my arm
one of a porcelain echelon
of arms waiting for
this sumptuous coupling
of needle and flesh,
such a lavish carcass,
the exquisite portal
of the veins opening,
then closing with one
last gasp of red
--
Donna Vorreyer is the author of To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. She hosts the online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey.