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.

(From Blue Hanuman, copyright © 2014 by Joan Larkin. Published by Hanging Loose Press, 231 Wyckoff Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217, http://www.hangingloosepress.com. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any medium, print or electronic, without the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.)