Mutations in the Mirror for X - Men by Stefano Donno

 Mutations in the Mirror

In the fractured glass of dawn,

they assemble—not heroes, but echoes

of what the world discards. Cyclops' gaze

a laser-cut confession, slicing through

the pretense of normalcy, while Storm

summons thunder from her throat,

a dialect of rain and rage.

We, the outliers, wear our skins

like borrowed suits, tailored with spikes

or wings that fold against the spine.

Magneto's pull, that ferrous whisper,

bends the bars of cages we never built,

yet inhabit. In this hybrid house,

free verse of flesh and fury,

we rewrite the epic: not conquest,

but coexistence, a metric of mismatched

heartbeats syncing in the storm's eye.

X marks the spot where difference

blooms, not as curse, but code—

evolving, insistent, alive.

Wolverine's Soliloquy: Claws and Echoes

Snikt— the sound of memory unsheathing,

adamantium ghosts in my veins,

a savage salvage of forgotten wars.

I heal, but scars script my story

in Braille for the blind to envy.

Bub, they call me, as if a bubble

could contain this feral froth,

bubbling up from Canadian wilds

to mansion halls where kids

with powers play at peace.

In fragmented nights, I prowl

the edges of dreams, slashing

through the silk of silence—

surreal survivor, droll in death's

doorway, murmuring obscene

numbers of lives I've outlived.

Yet here, in this pack of misfits,

I find a sweet repetition: slash,

regrow, repeat. Not hero, but hound,

loyal to the bone.

Xavier's Dream: Hybrid Codex

[Panel 1: Cerebro hums, a cerebral web

spinning threads of thought across divides.]

Professor, they say, teach us to hide

our gifts in plain sight—telepathy

as truce, not trespass. But in 2026's

verse, we experiment: minds merge

like micro-poems, brief bursts

of empathy exploding borders.

[Fragment: Magneto's manifesto,

scrawled in magnetic ink—

"Brotherhood or bust."]

We mother mutants from the margins,

Black, brown, blue-skinned kin,

storming the gates with wind and wit.

No tyranny of taste here, only

the power of poetry's periphery—

urgent, daring, a collective making

where X is not exclusion, but expansion.

[End panel: Dawn breaks, wheels turn,

the dream persists.]