If it Quacks

I’m walking a balancing beam

soles turned out,

duck-footed with poise.

Teetering the edge of conviction,

between my grandmother and mother.

The only difference:

I see the horror.

Maybe they do too.

I don’t know.

But—I know,

ancestral sin refurbished,

uninvited bite-marks in the wires.

Chiseled down by its feral doctrine.

Lackadaisical malady.

I pulled a hangnail of wallpaper,

that defended its -black mold,

exposing malignant craters

freckled with an infectious spoor of

unconsciousness.

That’s when my divergence declared itself:

with clairvoyance.

A raging Mallen streak,

a clogged pore,

stuffed with golf tees,

toothpicks,

wooden dowels.

Or

I will continue

to waddle and quack

on the edge

of my senses.