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The Scar
Let me see it:
this white weal of fortune,
rudely pointing the way from throat to belly
through the fall and rise and dark hair
of your chest,
contoured yet straight like a roman road -
a calculated division of skin -
plunging through and calmly down
like one of those nightdress cases:
rip open the velcro and stuff.
It's so long it seems
to circumnavigate you
like the Date Line it begins today
and ends in yesterday.
You say you're thankful.
There were no tragic tales to be told
of the young man leaving two little girls.
Did it hurt, when they cut you
through the red meat of your flesh
through bony resistance
exposing everything, risking meltdown,
or were your thoughts
frozen still on that street, your face
sweating pavement grit,
weeping for breath?
I want to count the stitches, but you say
there are too many -
some are faded now. Evidence obliterated.
One more survivor with his insides
re-routed, re-created.
Let me see it:
my finger wants to touch each trace
as if to touch that deformation
makes believing more possible.
For every stitch
and every bead of sweat on your born-again body
I am also thankful. |
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Evening Song
I'm going to light candles
and watch the wax melt
in its slowness
its down-ness
gathering warm white glue
on my table
this evening
The sofa's inviting me:
'Come and feel heavy,
lay yourself down on the length
and the breadth of me,
warm my insides as my cushions
caress and fill every crevasse
in your body, your body'
I'm going to have silk on me
soft on my thigh
my fingers slide over one shoulder
not sure where my skin begins
and a shiver
and the exquisite silence
I am turned inside out
I am turned inside out
this evening
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