battered bare
like a skeleton—
like a picked-
clean rib cage: empty,
shrunken, brittle, frivolous—
like a blank landscape
painting in which
anything can happen—
like a camouflaged
cat that feels
stealthily superior
while assiduously licking
her claws clean
and the tips of every tooth—
like the infinite grandeur
of a mountaintop view
getting compressed until
whatever is left
resembles blandness—
and the truth.
