#OctPoWriMo 2021 — Day 12: “Phantom Phagocytosis”

Phantom Phagocytosis 

intrigued by the broken mind’s
ability to send out her
murderous imps
to do her deadly bidding,
the bookish ones
throw her under
a microscope

in the old days,
it would have been
a cliff, a rickety bridge
            she never knew
           how to swim
          to begin with
but a pinioned brain stem
still twitches, fights
to the last synapse

incredulous, really,
the tedious process
of diagnosing, the patience
of patients or the docility
of surrendering to 
the unanswerable 

heeding the call
of their surrogate mother,
children of rage
run rampant,
little cancers
that devour her enemies

snatched from eroding
cervixes, bleeding 
wombs of earth, scavengers
poison their drinking water
as containment

changeling creatures
who can’t dim the din
of the siren to kill,
to preserve, to survive

they avoid her eye
when they tell her,
they avoid her venom
when she spits back

space-suited men
feel confident for the day,
the witches are silenced
in their unmarked graves

Image by Davien Donald from Pixabay