mark parsons – 5 poems

Masks 1


Stout with a series of fleshy tubercules
Evenly spaced
On the smooth or segmented
Dorsum

The larva will
Mount and fasten itself
Over the face
In a perpendicular orientation,
Secured by braids it discharges that loop around the ears,

Where
It proceeds to pupate:
The chrysalis curved and angular,
The head truncate, a round protuberance
At the apex.
The color, determined by
Local genetic balance, ensures the pupa
Will blend in. under
The chrysalis enzymes dissolve
Most of the tissues but leaving the nervous system
And imaginal discs
For nose, mouth, nasolabial folds, lips, and chin
Intact. 


Masks 2


Like a roll-down shutter
Security door
For a storage unit,

Or hole-in-the-wall
That’s closed for the night,
But instead of the few possessions

Of a guy
Who’s getting divorced
And losing his house and child,

Or a standing bar
In a neighborhood
Where the rent’s sky-high,

Locked inside
Is a fifties sci-fi, low budget movie
Or comic book

Monster—
Maybe a species of alien,
Or result of an out-of-control experiment,

Or nuclear accident,
Or repressed unconscious desires and drive
Manifested

By an actor wearing a rubber suit and
Assaulting the door from inside, 
So the cotton pleats,

Peaked and pinched,
Bow and bulge,
Gravid white.


Masks 3


Between the brim of a baseball cap
And a cotton surgical mask,
A paraboloid vision slit
Like a medieval helmet.


Masks 4
	

Uncovered, her features glisten:
Lips moist and fat, writhe
Like worms under flipped-over log rot.	 
A grey wood-lice, discovered, rolls its crustacean
Plate armor-back to a button-nose.
Her cheeks gleam with ant larva whiter than polished rice.
The larva’s already eaten her nasolabial furrows to bright pink
And bare, inflamed, and are now attracted
By convex swells where the flesh is warm with the blush of

Capillaries close to the surface:  after the skin’s exhausted
Of collagen, it will fall,
Collapsing along the lines of the mouth
That will deepen and make her look like a marionette,
With jowls like pouches of soft leather,
As deflated and empty as a pensioner’s coin-purse.
The chin, home to slugs, appears wrinkled
And textured like prunes from the yellow and grey mottles
Of the shell-less gastropods.


Masks 5


Razorback
Turtle shell
Pointed keel

Dorsal scute
Centerline
Bisects face.


MARK PARSONS' poems have been recently published or are forthcoming in Ex Pat Press, Dreich, Cape Rock, and I-70 Review. His books include, Stills, (Southernmost Books, 2023), Spiral (Anxiety Press, 2025), and The Kingdom of Middle Children (forthcoming, Southernmost Books). He lives in Tucson, Arizona.  His twitter handle is https://twitter.com/parsons_mfa


HOME