Today I am delighted to share with you the poetry of E. Vegvary.

Intriguingly entitled ‘Break This Chrysalis Open and Extract My Embrionic Soul’, it is a striking snapshot of long spanning conflict, filled with gothic imagery and the dirty fingerprints of religion.

You will find the piece below, accompanied by a small gallery of art that, for various reasons, related to my reading of Vegvary’s words. I would love to know what you see in her words, and which artwork best represents that – from those pictured here, spanning the entirety of art history and your own creations too. A little reverse-ekphrasis project if you want to get fancy about it, which I, for one, do!

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‘𝕭𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖐 𝕿𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖞𝖘𝖆𝖑𝖎𝖘 𝕺𝖕𝖊𝖓 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝕰𝖝𝖙𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖙 𝕸𝖞 𝕰𝖒𝖇𝖗𝖞𝖔𝖓𝖎𝖈 𝕾𝖔𝖚𝖑’
𝖇𝖞 𝕰. 𝖁𝖊𝖌𝖛𝖆𝖗𝖞

A lesser demon in bespoke
Pashmina boasting bone buttons
And antler cufflinks
The tailored suit shows the edges
Of his skeleton
Jutting and dangerously shaped

An angel unaware of hierarchy
Itches beneath the hair shirt
That hides his ragged wounds
Bare feet leaving bloody prints
The name of his god is tattooed
On the inside of his lower lip

They meet in a calendar
Which does not mark the week of creation
The deep grey sky and the ash grey earth remember
The war they have both forgotten

Integrity
Dishonesty
The corrupt and the clean
The sacred and the profane

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© Words by E. Vegvary, 2020.

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Enter A Separate World to continue reading Generally Gothic poetry, and head here to submit your own work in any art-form.
This piece is published as part of the Dark Poetics series. There you’ll find more posts on poetry and the gothic, as they appear.