Andrew R. Dugan
Danaus Plexippus

Light champagning through the trees
til the grass is polished into aventurine
inside the white border of a photograph.

In the foreground: a butterfly, wings
autumn colored, crimson and orange
burnt, amber eyelets laced in black,

perching on the shoulder of a boy.
Tousled halo of hair; soft blue eyes
fixed. A glimpse of the wings’ underside:

worn leather with white punctuation:
additional eyes. In the background:
A black-frame bike with bright flashes

of naked metal around the bolt holes
where the training wheels used to be. If
I tilt the picture just right, my face

covers his. In the center of the picture
I look at myself. My face in spring soil,
forever blooming. Reflected back, a face

transfixed, peering, wrinkled, opaque.
My child face like seeing a shooting star
or magic trick for the first time. Would

my child self scare it away? I roamed
all over the backyard, testing its loyalty.
No movement I made seemed to startle it.

Even tilting my shoulder and bending my face,
as towards the sun, feeling its legs bristle
tentatively on my skin so close the antennae

shivered in my breath, did not shatter this
pellucid moment—a slam, my mother’s
surprised metallic laughter, the screen door,

her rush inside to find the time-preserving
camera: with my eyes wide its wings flex
and for its own reasons the creature flew off.

Translated from the Austrian

(which I can now understand)

As I climb the stairs I notice the red
wallpaper and notice I don’t know what
the pattern is or means. Turning left at
right angles as the staircase ascends, I
notice dark clothing and cold eyes staring

from the portraits on the wall. The faces
and the pallor of their skin I can’t see.
When I reach the top I feel like I’ve been
climbing stairs for hours, but I can see
the bottom only a few stories down.

As I enter the room, I hear the voice again
of tour guide who has been steering us
through Hohensalzburg Castle. Carefully
it confirms that I am in fact seeing
a toilet in the center of the room

which is otherwise empty. The voice bids
me to begin: I am to deposit
everything I brought with me. I can see
the splashing as I mechanically start
to dump objects inside the open bowl:

the marbles I got from my grandfather
drop in one at a time, smoothly, no plop,
just ripples that lap the sides of the bowl.
My complete set of nineteen ninety-two
baseball cards, the first few one at a time

then the whole box tipped in at once. Then in
goes the dead-eyed portrait of John Opie
from the Harp and Hound Tavern, so that I
won’t see it on the stairs again. My eyes
widen as I drop in my tastefully

bound copy of Moby Dick. I’m starting
to make a mess with water sloshing out
so I instinctively drop in the
tour guide who protests alternately in
Austrian and good English as I jam

his body deeper into the nearly
full bowl with my fists, beat him down the drain
until I cease to hear his words at all
and only see his lips mouthing the words
of this poem translated from a dream.

_ _

Andrew Dugan has believed in the value of sharing your art with those around us since his years as an undergraduate. He completed his Masters of Arts degree in English Literature from Bridgewater State in 2012 and as a teacher has taught both creative and technical writing courses.

>> Back to Issue 18, 2015