Lookโthe poet canโt help but be a mirror,
and the mirror canโt be anything but honest.
The truth canโt help but be elusive,
and this is why smoke is mirrorโs partner-in-crime.
Crime is only criminal in context,
and shifting context is as simple as looking
from a different angle.
Angles arenโt all resolute; some are skewed or at least skew-able
by a too-tightened screw or squinted eye.
The poet knows this, and she
uses it to her advantage: slipping through
the unsealed cracks
or locking herself in a round white room
where her black-ink words and her blue-ink words and her red-ink words
all ripple and roll from floor to ceiling
til the once-blank walls are smothered in kaleidoscopic thought.
As any kaleidoscope knows,
you have to look in order to see it
but after every trembling change, itโs gone.
โItโ being, of course,
the reflection of the reflectionโs reflection.
Thatโs why the poet is a mirror
and also a photographโa racketeer of reality.
She can make this old colored glass look young again.
Right there, right there, right there.
The poet is a mirror
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Lizzy Burnam ๐ 
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