(“Me only cruel immortality consumes…” Alfred Tennyson, Tithonus)
Grasshopper stoops;
his shadow,
an elephant
holding a parasol, plods
along achromatic walls.
Carcinogenic winds scream
through salt-crooked voids.
In a space beyond dying,
he withers in chitinous weeping.
Skin, hardened husk, cracks.
Each step erodes him further
until he is a fine green powder,
the color of our springtime.
Lucy Simpson is wife of one and mother to two children in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Her work has appeared in Gargoyle, WordWrights, and Natural Bridge, among other publications. Matchstick & Bramble. Her first chapbook, is available from The Broadkill Press. As a child she was terrified of sunflowers, often remarking, “A flower of that size is possibly carnivorous.” Currently, she loves huge, alien-world-looking, flowers.