“The Eye” by Nathan Hassall
The Eye
(a)
A red balloon bursts under the wheel of a car careening
into a tree. Out of its exhaust, fumes drip onto the browning
grass. An angel emerges from the pool.
He floats towards me. Wings made of feathers. Feathers
made of knives. They fan my skin — cheek, neck, shin.
My father’s eye glints in the blade. Wrapping his temples,
a gold-thorned halo.
(b)
In my bedroom mirror, goat horns twist from my father’s
head. We need you home right now, son. A door inside
the mirror opens. There’s something up with your mother.
Where are my hands, my mother cries. She paces back
and forth.
She lifts her wrists to her face and plugs them into her eye
sockets.
A fountain of flames jets her to the clouds.
She is a bird, wingless, falling.
Her hands land in mine.
(c)
Mother is a ship. The sea wraps its arms around her body.
Father at the fireplace, pulling glass out of the furnace.
Take this, he says. Shape it before it clots.
In my mother’s right hand, which is in my left hand, a
mountain swirls.
In her other, the glass flares into a galaxy.
A rope unfurls from the lightbulb in the middle of the room,
attaches to my bellybutton. I shrink.
The ocean crashes in from the right.
The room shrinks.
Salt, ash, mercury.
The room flattens into a line —
father, mother, phoenix —
expands into a nameless sphere, splits
reality at its veins.
Everything is naked, aching; the hovering eye
of God
Nathan Hassall
Nathan Hassall believes in poetry's transformational potential. He weaves dreams, altered states, numinous experiences, and the natural world into his work. Hassall's poems have appeared in The Dewdrop, Arteidolia, Ghost City Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, La Piccioletta Barca, The Inflectionist Review, and more. He currently serves as the Poet Laureate of Malibu, California. Sign up to his poetry mailing list at www.nathanhassall.com/signup and subscribe to his poetry YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@nathanhassallpoetry.
Headshot: Rachael Hassall
Photo Credit: Staff