I am a Magnifying Glass

An original poem by Coco Poley on June 11, 2022.

image used for free with credit, from Unsplash

I am a magnifying glass

so point me at an object or a dry and wretched leaf,
let me burn and tear asunder,
or let me show you something microcosmic:
we shall examine the Thing together as if we were philosophers, theologists,
some kind of other academic with a privileged wealth of endless time
(to labor over their own thoughts,
and not over their part in Capitalism’s Wheel)

I am a magnifying glass,

yet I know not where to focus my eye, nor how to interpret what I see;
here I lie with fire in my heart, determination in my body:
wading through the muck of invasive voices — 
(who whisper their dark secrets in my ear like buzzing mosquitoes,
hungry for a bite of blood,
thirsting to leave their itch in the patterns of my mind)
they said I am meant to be legendary, and I believed it:
yet I am not the legend they so carefully wove,
I am not the tale, nor creature, nor human they wanted to mold.

I am a magnifying glass,

but is a magnifying glass its own?
it seems but a tool in the hands of others
and so I feel each time, a tool lost in a cause,
a fool in the hands of the trickier, slicker people in this world
(that I am still growing up in)
so point me at an object or a dry and wretched leaf,
let me burn and tear asunder,
or let me show you something microcosmic.
thus, in a hand, I scry.

—

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