The Inventor

by | Oct 11, 2022 | Issue Twenty Nine, Poetry

after Maze, dir. J. Lenica, 1962

The man with the mechanical bird wings watches over the city and thinks to join it. But with him he brings the ticking of a clock. The skeleton of a dinosaur. An old man who can never leave the window. He will do the improbable. He will bend iron like rope. Find the largest rose and feed it to an alligator with his deepest apologies. What if you could turn your face into a bouquet? Would you let your body be devoured to the bone? Become just a head and live your life in the lap of something greater? The man knows that some things are too heavy for flight. He’s tired. A crow invites him in. He sits in a chair. He is hypnotized. Flashing lights and his brain scatters. He remembers flight. He remembers falling. That’s the last thing he remembers.

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