To Skin an Illusion

MA|DE

MA|DE is a collaborative writing partnership comprised of interdisciplinary artist Mark Laliberte (author of asemanticasymmetry – Anstruther Press, 2017) and writer Jade Wallace (author of Rituals of Parsing – Anstruther Press, 2018). MA|DE is currently working on their first full-length collection. Their poems have previously appeared in Poetry is Dead, PRISM International, Trinity Review, and Vallum. Test Centre is their debut chapbook (ZED Press, 2019).

Anything can be flayed.
— Cassidy McFadzean, “Avenue of the Saints,” Hacker Packer

Flaying a rainbow down to grey,
its eternal sleep on the side of the
prism that can never be observed.
Over where it ends, golden light splits,
cracks the surface of a mirror oblong.
Burnished corona surges up from
shards of boot-flattened face.

Greyed bone, bowed skeletal abyss:
a spine arching in empyrean emptiness.

Waist knot, up against a spectrum’s
grain. Reflection, refraction, dispersion.
This wasteland needs no girdle; quotation
mark, sickle sharp, hunting for green.
Encircle the lower torso on tenterhooks.
Fix the aching clouds to the sky with
clothespins, banding for missing colours.

---

Issue 10.1