THE EMPEROR’S NEW SKIN

by Dana Wall

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

At night, the spray tan must fade
like sunset on sandstone, revealing
the soft animal beneath the mask—
a man who fears his own reflection,
who builds towers to touch the sky
but cannot reach his own heart.

I imagine him alone in gilt rooms,
counting retweets like rosary beads,
his hands small as a child's reaching
for validation through blue light.
The weight of inheritance heavy
as his father's disappointed ghost.

The paper-thin skin of his ego
requires constant tending, like
an endangered orchid that feeds
on camera flashes, on the roar
of crowds that fill the hollow
where love should have grown.

Even his hair tells a story—
how it coils around absence,
a golden nautilus shell hiding
the spiral of ancient fears.
Each morning, he reassembles
himself from fragments of pride.

I wonder about the boy who became
this avalanche of need, this hunger
shaped like a man. How many mirrors
cracked before he learned to replace
reflection with gold leaf, to mistake
attention for the warmth of touch?

Watch how he circles his wounds
like a leopard guarding territory,
how he marks everything mine, mine
as if ownership could fill the space
where meadowlarks should sing,
where truth should root and bloom.

Dana Wall traded balance sheets for prose sheets after years of keeping Hollywood's agents and lawyers in perfect order. Armed with a Psychology degree that finally proved useful when creating complex characters and an MBA/CPA that helps her track plot points with spreadsheet precision, she ventured into the haunted halls of Goddard College's MFA program. Her work in Bending Genres Journal, Mixed Tape Review, Witcraft, 34 Orchard, Eunoia Review, and Sykroniciti confirms that words are more reliable than numbers, though occasionally harder to balance. 

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