Kaleidoscope

after Damien Hirst

early morning stack of parcels
like Lego crowds the room
blocks the light from the window

larger specimens of Owl and Heliconius
flat packed in coloured triangles of paper
polystyrene casings for protection

chemical smell distresses them
see table set up for dissection
scissors and scalpels for wings
long precise tweezers

pinned
bodies
eventually
discarded
divorced
from the ‘real thing’
large bins
at the ready

picked for their iridescence
small scales cover chitin
blended species
on canvas border

follow flowers’ ultraviolet markings
leaves traces of kaleidoscopic chaos

months later
the musty mortuarium
holds its value
like banknotes
in a damp room

a flutter of wingbeats
would fan the air
precisely affixed
unnoticed noise
no lasting presence

 

Veronica Fibisan is a PhD candidate in English Literature at the University of Sheffield. Her areas of interest include ecocriticism, ecofeminism, coastal radical landscape poetry and the Anthropocene. Her research is a practice-based creative and critical project that focuses on key locations on the UK shoreline, where she spends significant time. She has published poetry notably in The Sheffield Anthology (Smith/Doorstop, 2012), Cast: The Poetry Business Book of New Contemporary Poets (Smith/Doorstop, 2014), Plumwood Mountain Journal (Vol. 4 Nr. 1) and Wretched Strangers Anthology (Boiler House Press, 2018).