Page 13 - Contrast1992Spring

April's Jewel Alicia Clarke

J April showed me
a twisted light.
"I tortured it!" she squealed proudly.
It had died silently between two blades of her
adolescent fingernails,
and lay lifeless in the groove of her palm;
wings plucked off,
abdomen still glowing flercly in the August night.
My grief caked in my throat
and I gulped.

To me those creatures were
tiny stars that had fallen from heaven,
to dance romantically in my backyard -
a courtship dance-
and I'd dance with them,
barefoot and at the brink of womenhood,
desperately longing to be lovlier.
I'd spin myself insanely
amidst their throbbing love lights.

But April liked to catch them and
keep them captive in a glass jar to illuminate her bedroom.
(They'd be dead the next morning).
And April liked to make
those silly glowing yellow-green rings
from the mangled bodies.
She'd display them proudly, for a laugh
or for vanity,
for the envy of the younger girls on the block.
"Make one for me too!" they'd plead,
whild I'd recoil in disgust.

But, aren't we all guilty?
Haven't we all destroyed
Some precious earthbound star
as it blinked out its frenzied unanswered
signal of love
only to become a jewel on the hand of the
loveless?

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