Elite, Adam Strauss (December 2025)

 Elite

The golds in their greengold sheathes.
The regencies in their diamond swaddles.
All the fin de siècles sharp like caudal fins.
I could have rejected the pale one, the one
Light filtered through like a redundancy of sun.
Like a ribbon of snow, I walked
Through the cold thick as the plumage of an owl.
An owl in the Tyrol’s could have slit
My wrist then broke it to the very marrow.
I could have fallen and been unable to grab
The nearest anything to get back up.
Killed by an owl in the Tyrol.
The talons of the Tyrol.
The Rolls Royce of deaths.
The rose filters through snow.
Like a ribbon of snow, owls’
Feathers cinched my throat.
Snow fell the plush of a chamois.
Each crystal started to sting.
Powdered glass fell all around and on all of me and inside.
My insides got extremely red:
What could I have done than die.
The death as one gets led to one’s dying and
The dying itself, the never dead drama.
I did not stay still: like a caesura not a comma.
I died—I died hard—but I did not stay still.
If there’s a heaven I’ll have
Permission to haunt your throat.
My insides turned so red they turned into sepsis.
Rather they turned into prolepsis.
I turned dead as the
Deadliest perfection.
I peerlessly had children.
Like milk they coil around my larynx.