"The Centauress (An Exquisite Corpse)" by Margaryta Golovchenko

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Four legs that never stood upright

extend from a belled-out mass of waxy petals, that thing

we like to call a body. At night

she is a candle, a fading light that plunged

from the shores of reason, believing the depths

to be the brightest abode. As always

there is a head

but its function is still unclear. Let’s call it a cake topper

to the ensemble of bodily functions

which have been expanded to include dissociation, vanishing

(not to be confused with near-transparency, an emotional state)

and the partial peeling apart into layers, a lesson learned from pinecones.

Like all things, the body needs a stopper, something

to contain the Pandoric contents. The centauress is no exception,

her middle the tether to two crafty ends. There she sits

in a permanent state of melting, an apparition of saintly

illusion that has learned from the oracles:

silence is pregnant but never delivers.

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Margaryta Golovchenko (she/her) is a poet and critic from Tkaronto/Toronto, currently completing her MA in the art history and curatorial studies program at York University. The author of two chapbooks, her poetry has appeared in publications such as Menacing Hedge, Long Con Magazine, Acta Victoriana, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and others.

Twitter: @Margaryta505.