Ouroboros by Courtney Leigh

OUROBOROS


The great cycle makes good on dichotomy—what’s one thing,
a thing divergent. I am making us coats out of mutton, I am stewing
Arithmancy into tongues & graciously devouring them.
We talk about a future of Brimstone, you say no future at all.
We watch angels die on the crackling tv screen—we wait
as they come alive in our living room. The serpent in the tank
beside us chews on its own skin. It is shedding, it is hungry.
I have dead skin stuck between my teeth. You are widening your mouth
inhaling perdition, turning inside out the tv. What is lovely has been
eaten. Angels watch us from the other side. They are tethered to
our alchemy. They are smoking weed, drinking booze, & laughing manically
at our bad habits. They are hanging on to every drama, every romantic Satan
comedy. The true tragedy is to see ourselves in this dream. The true terror
is suffering from our own intangibility. We are lost things—to the angels
we are fading quickly. Our inexplicable fragility clings to the ceiling fan
of a celestial waiting room, rounding ourselves, mouth to feet
ripping off our skin—teeth & gnash—eagerly.

​

Courtney Leigh is the author of "the unrequited <3<3 of red riding hood & her lycan lover (Dancing Girl Press, 2016)." She is The Bowhunter of White Stag Publishing, & the creator & Kitchen Witch of Crimson Sage Apothecary.
​