I watch her. Refracted, the shimmering shadows
Her curved riping body, demon-faced fair.
She is foreign, familiar, a darkly-lit ice queen
Besting galaxies old dusted star-strewn;
Clad velvet, locked rusting, in iron’s cold stare.

She, once cast off, now sits with quick madness
Slip-surfaced wet from salt looking fragile glass skies
Her sloe-dark eye, all-seeing, shatters mysteries as mirrors;
If beauty is truth, says she, gaze-narrowed onward,
Then as beauty and virtue, truth in her turn, too, will die.

She nods to me now, ready to have a true telling
Of a girl, close theft-taking empress beauty’s fair crown;
Palace pale, wolf-hunted, a snowy white rosebud
Blood of hers a thick reddening
When it redded, so it bedded, it bled and bled down.

I saw appear, there, in her heart’s hot ashes
A rush-gushing wild heat, promised power to come
There’s but one answer, I hear her, hands raising
Slim, slight, ready, they beckon
The story still a-twisting, turning, crackles and thrums.

Speak it, mirror, speak me of my own beauty
Thrown wordless at me, cold crisping clarion call
And as Sad Mercury rises, silver weeping moonlight
Yes, my Queen, I bind anew my mistress,

You are

[again]

The Very Fairest Of Them All.