Mindscreen

See, it’s a kind of crime scene,

as if the mind were a dime

novel, a scrim of need and semen,

all cinder and siren, a dim

prison where the miser dines

on rinds of desire, and the sinner,

sincere as denim, repeats Eden’s

demise — that luckless toss of dice.

Yet here at the rim of this demesne

a mitigating mise-en-scène:

a close-up of her mother stirring rice,

a glass of sparkling cider, a mince

pie spliced in — not to rescind or mend:

what mind denies mercies mine in the end.