Jessica Furtado
HERSELF: AN ALTAR
(an erasure from Stephen King’s Carrie)
She felt her face twisting and crumpling,
a small altar of terror;
an altar of flaming agonies and glittering eyes.
She felt lightning in her brain,
far-off, hissing, struck blue
through cloudy depths – an abyss.
She broke like a penitent,
sharp as a needle catching the light;
steely flashes at the edge
of her precise and even eyes.