Size / / /

If marble people were

the world, some of us

would strike others

with great force

so we could inhabit

a circle of power,

until we were caromed

away in turn by the

sudden force of another.

Others would stand

tall and straight,

far above the antics

of such childlike games.

Doric, Ionic, Corinthian,

upright and unyielding,

we would carry the weight

of the ages with style

and stoic indifference.

Yet the rare ones would

be those who endured

the brutal assault

of hammer and chisel

to emerge transformed,

revealing the inherent

grace that lies hidden

in the branching veins

of earthbound stone.




Bruce Boston is the author of forty-seven books and chapbooks, including the novels The Guardener's Tale and Stained Glass Rain. His writing has received the Bram Stoker Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Asimov's Readers Award, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. You can read more about him at www.bruceboston.com and see some of his previous work in our archives.
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4 Nov 2024

“Did you know,” the witch says, “that a witch has no heart of her own?”
Outsiders, Off-worlders {how quickly one carves out a corner of the cosmos, / claims a singular celestial body as [o u r s] in the scope of infinity}
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