Before the Mirror on New Year’s Eve

Philip Metres

Take this glass, quoting me darkly:

Cassandra, coalmine canary.

I want to sing the confusing flesh,

The confounding joyful leash,

Flesh that stretches planet-wide

If a planet were human-sized.

These pulsing thermal layers we wear,

Not the myriad places they tear.

The sweet and acrid cabbage head,

Its labyrinths and where they lead,

Not how cleanly one can divide,

With one strike, body from the mind.

You here with me, reflected too,

The four of us now become two

Making joy with cry, weep laughter,

Naked amid the slaughter.