Subversion, by Sarah Carleton

Marginalia from a 14th century Psalter.

Subversion

Dogma plods on page after page
while at the edges, a rabbit riding a snail-unicycle hurls a spear,

another rabbit plucks a lyre, and a giant hare beheads a prisoner.
The medieval margins teem with bunnies.

There’s one poking a gargoyle in the ass with a stick 
and another sword-fighting on the back of a lion.

Wide-eyed bunny balances on a high-wire vine 
alongside an armored knight.

This little rabbit goes to market 
with a basket of hounds on his back;

this little rabbit stays home 
and plays a kidney-shaped bagpipe.

This one harnesses a dog and takes it for a gallop,
a snail perched on his gauntlet-clad paw.

There’s a human-sized hare with a stick over his shoulder
like a cartoon runaway, 

a man hanging from the end instead of a rag bundle.
Another big-eared brute pulls buns from an oven with a peel.

Atop a scored-grass turquoise hill, two rapt rabbits scheme,
their black arms gesticulating, calibrating the ratio 

of pinheads to angels. Meanwhile, beneath them,
the breeders bound and burrow and riddle the mound with holes.

Sarah Carleton

Sarah Carleton writes poetry, edits fiction, plays the banjo and raises her son in Tampa, Florida. Her poems have appeared in many publications, including Houseboat, Poetry Quarterly, Bijou, Off the Coast, Shark Reef, Wild Violet, The Binnacle, Cider Press Review, Nimrod, Ekphrastic, Chattahoochee Review, Kindred, Spillway, Tar River Poetry and Crab Orchard Review.