Mother and Babe after “Dead Mother” by Egon Schiele
“Everything is/ Living dead” – Schiele

Your hands are bloodied
Little glow-worm, blind seed-child
Your red hand the heart of your mother
Though what do you know of it

Your eye as clean as a salt tear –
You enveloped little butcher-bug
Folded in the black dregs of the universe
Bobbing bald and bulb-like in your element

Your mother a mere myth
You do not see your mother’s moon head
Nor its mangled reflection that is
Her dead hand crooked beneath you

But glowing and mindless
Only mindlessly drink its light
You a new vampiric little moon
Bubbled orange like spawn in black water

Susanna Galbraith studies English at Trinity College Dublin. Her writing has appeared previously in Belleville Park Pages, Abridged, JoLT and Icarus Magazine.