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Poetry
Speculative
Candles perch like angels
beating back the night
with triumphant wings. The scribe
begins his work. “Formavit”
sprouts leaves beneath his quill,
the Bernacae, which drop
from the margin to the floor
only to take flight and squawk
out the window through the night
leaving the acrid stench
of iron gall amongst the codices.
The scribe ignores them, focused
on “de limo terrae,” which scatters
into a gryphon, all wing and talon,
that saunters from the page
and shakes the last few spots
of wet ink across the floor
before sweeping to the stables
for a meal. The vines climb
down the desk now, each blossom
ripe with feathers. The scribe
continues, “in faciem” roaring
into a panther, which pads
around the room, stretching
each paw wide before it curls
into a nap. “Eius” swims
from the rulings, a crocodile
to be chased around the room
by the hydrus on “spiraculum.”
The candles begin to flicker
as the scribe starts rubrication.
The sun slips up the horizon
and spills into the scriptorium,
dragging the cock crow with it.
The floor is all leaves and down,
spotted fur and scale. Shouts
confess the novices’ discovery
of the dead horses. Beneath
the steady quill, “animam
viventem” receives its halo.
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Copyright 2008, Joshua Gage. All rights reserved. Joshua Gage is an ornery curmudgeon from Cleveland, OH. His chapbook, Deep Cleveland Lenten Blues, is available from Deep Cleveland Press, and his first full-length collection, breaths, is available from VanZeno Press. He is a graduate of the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Naropa University. He has a penchant for Pendleton shirts, rye whiskey and any poem strong enough to yank the breath out of his lungs. He stomps around Cleveland in a purple bathrobe where he hosts the monthly Deep Cleveland Poetry hour and enjoys the beer at Brew Kettle.
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