The Nested Country

Behold: a country of nested
borders.

Look at it and be awed by
the Big, the Bright, the Beautiful of it.

If you manage to twist it open and enter
you’ll find another within —

less Big, less Bright. (Beauty is in
the eye of the contained.) If you

go in, you will find another,
and then another; it will be dim in there.

At the heart, a battered core with two faces:
one, Black Kettle, the other, Nat Turner;

it is nowhere as Bright and Beautiful
as the Big Doll you can barely recall

now that you’re
all the way in and can see

that even though it is full,
it is also hollow.