Moon Bridge by Margaret Wang (14, Arizona)

Marble corridors draw, magnetic, to her steel-plated soles. Bare feet
click across enameled halls, tines of heavenly jurisdiction rising, 
falling, each a ringing edict. Her toes are sheathed in blade, assassins, hidden
by an ivory silk and fallen, in artful drapery, shrouding her heels from view. 
Couriers bear witness to more than a delicate script on scroll, though 
if they know, delay cannot be tolerated. Striking will be quick, dual wield
a proverb on each leg, and the corpse will be imbued
with justice.

---

Wonder how beady-eyed eunuchs quench the taste of 
missing heat teetering on an outstretched tongue? Keeper gentle, 
she’s hammering out your likeness deep into the night, learn that
patience is a virtue. You’d do well to admire the 
moon awhile, balanced on the palace edge, as no revolutions involve her. 
She stretched up on tip-toes last night and plunged a finger into a crater, and
that regolith made her an addict. Still, she comes back for more.

Nobility drowns themselves in fruitless debauchery, and she prefers
to indulge in sleep-- but nowhere is she noble. It’s a valiant endeavour, her 
strolls across the canal, but her steps are only 
reflected on the underside of pond water. She turns half-lidded eyes 
toward the high-backed arch and sighs in
incomplete divinity.

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