The Eye that Wanders

Seconds after the tyrant’s granite iris
retires to the night, his eyeball detaches to slither
from its nook, a vein-laced teardrop with icicle-
moist tail that follows, a swell
already visible on this newly naked nerve.
The eye wants to discover what virgin skin begs that he molest.

The dripping pupil aims man’s sniper, ideal to molest
undetected. What evidence can his iris
leave? A snail’s map from nerve
that, flaccid, drags from cornea as eye slithers
over glassy citrus swell
with areola clenched to icicle-

taut peaks? No. This cyberspace deception is more common than icicles
in your grandparents’ wisened freezer – but don’t molest
their photographs with this licentious eye, lest it loom and swell
to fill every snake-tendril of your brain: How long until that iris’s
courage heightens? How long until it slithers
from CRT projections, gains the nerve

to increase the mileage of its now-dry optic nerve
that scrapes behind? The eye, sickle-
sharp, perfects pirouette and slithers
to claim flesh that tremors when molested.
Invigorated bounds the iris
now; the sodden sack rolls over swelling

thighs that howl as acid swells
to explode from wanton flesh and scald the nerve.
Desperate: scars at birth on sclera, dire is
the eye’s chosen landscape. It envisages numb icicle
relief and cartwheels home. Hydrochloric cuspid molest
vulnerable corneal cells and the eye cannot slither

fast enough to familiar antidote. Slither
faster! As fire webs begin to swell
into welts the eye thinks: its error wasn’t the choice to molest
– it just lacked better sensitivity, like nerves
in the tongue’s tip. Icicle
edges tingle his socket as the iris

settles home. The nerve to slither
and molest evaporates, at least until the swell
goes down. He compensates her with baby’s breath and irises. Her gaze drips icicles.


*Remember people, I'm Aussie, in case there's things that seem to be spelling mistakes.

*A sestina is a poem based on the challenge of repeating the same six line endings in each stanza in a particular pattern - I just thought I'd post this note here for people who aren't familiar with this form so they undersatnd why I am repeating myself so much!