Via Negativa

by Maggie Millner

Reality is just a giant nip-slip Nature, the Internet Fine art is a nip-slip And every drug you ever did Loving someone is a nip-slip Not to mention sex The tree by my house is in a constant state of nip-slip The white-sand beach, forget it A beautiful man is a nip-slip And God, an areola that is slipping through the fog Lightning is the nip-slip of a galaxy And nightmares are a nip-slip into hell My life is a long, slow nip-slip I grasp alarmingly for others at the moment That a nip slips into view My loneliness is a nip I show to no one Like an unflattering photo from my youth

Maggie Millner

Maggie Millner lives in California, and her work has appeared in Phoebe, Interrupture, 32 Poems, and elsewhere.