Tuesday poem #180 : Virginia Konchan : Mata Hari at L’Heure Exquise

After the lobotomy, they scraped my brain
cavity like a child rustling up
the last bite of ice-cream from a bowl.
All done.  All gone.  All good, now.

Firing squad, I am a free-floating agent,
stripped from the putrescence of memory,
delivered into spell-binding feature films
without reason, adjectives, or nouns.

My heart’s hot tears smart
and spatter on my shirt
like blood from a fattened lamb.
I laugh at my own histronics.

Look who’s laughing now.
O, lyric subjectivity.
O, exotic German spy.
Who knew you could quell a crowd?

My mind is an odorless vapor.
My soul’s fire-fangled feathers
wrangle five-star smiles.
I, Robot.  I, Claudius.  I bow.

Author of a chapbook, Vox Populi (Finishing Line Press), and a collection of short stories, Anatomical Gift (forthcoming, Noctuary Press), Virginia Konchan’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Best New Poets, The Believer, Boston Review, The New Republic, and Verse.  Co-founder of Matter, a journal of poetry and political commentary, she lives in Montreal.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan