They creep along the crease where plaster’s link
with geometric     terra cotta inlays
slips beyond the statutory pane’s oblique
illumination         Squalor’s dreg-lined byways

evince these shadows’ huddled histories
of furtive ventures through the crevices
where nights yield to darkening that sullies
the dark     & dank     spore-stippled surfaces

despair the light of noon to bare their scourge
No teakwood bed     nor wicker chair     will mask
depravity     as Geishas deftly forge
refinements to obscure the blights of dusk

What’s bent by vice yet breaks for dearth of rest
& makes its bed with vermin as needs must

STEPHANIE L. HARPER