Outside a Clinic

A crimson window framed in black and white
that cracks the slate of February’s sky
lets in a ray of rectifying light
to startle from their sleep the passersby.
What is this great and ghoulish valentine
from which the ruins of a cupid cry
a sanguinary season’s wish? “Be mine,”
the ruddy little body seems to sigh.
Can we still walk in shadow past a place
where lust pays brutal avarice to kill,
and see unmoved a butchered cherub’s face
outside this latest dark satanic mill?
Or has the crimson sign held in the light
turned February’s gray to black-and-white?

Mark Amorose

Mark Amorose teaches poetry and humane letters at Tempe Preparatory Academy, in Tempe, Arizona, and resides with his wife, Maria, and their seven children in the neighboring city of Mesa. His poems have most recently appeared in Measure, The Lyric, and Dappled Things.

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