They Try To Erase Me

I never had been born. It was old hands
that sketched my frame. Hands that knew how to suffer
wisely. It was a gift
to my bones, a curse that shifts
with weight and time.
Clocks wait on scales to tip time. I am rushed.
Blood cycles through my life.
Old lines outline my eyes. I am timed.

I slept with a man
and was traced. He recreated me; my child.
My simple face on a prettier canvas.
I didn’t wish for this.
I didn’t dream.
She just belongs to me.
I drag my bones along aching seas
each step pains deeper with memory,
with time.
Dark lines shade over mine.
They try to erase me

From my bones, I cry.
I cannot be
an easy sketch of a memory.

He Bags Them Up After

He bags them up after
he watches me give my limbs
to a wood chipper;
a test.
A Loyal Test.
A Bloody True Test.

He knows that we are gambling.
Everything is in.
Stakes are high.

Gangly arms and
gorgeous legs
hit,
kick,
scratch at him through
plastic.
It’s not that he doesn’t care to play,
he is convinced.

The taxidermy came.
Took a thousand dollars with
my useful pieces,
said he would come back tomorrow.

I waited.
He waited with me,
with my bloody mess of me.
He poured my tea.
He scented my herbs.
He kept my perfume.
He smiled approvingly at my test.

After sleep cauterized my wounded
lady,
I woke to the scent of
constant devotion hovering
around my limbless torso.
Hair brushed, breasts held
firmly in black cotton.
A smile of approval

and
limbs. Arms, legs,
kept,
stripped of death fragrance,
nails painted
with pretty sincerity.

His gift to me.

Soldiers

In the beginning,
it was as if barren logs
were thrown together in heaps
for
decomposition

cautious steps
young
benumb

do you hear the bombs?

we are in belligerent land!

The Speaker is right

hazardous air hovers
stagnant
air is vacant

a perilous scent lingers
under
my nostrils
disorienting
direction

South twitches!! To the left!

Barren logs
are not!

They are
amputees!
Victims of explosive surgery,
nerves of Soldiers’ exposed;
an operating table…

God’s acre.

Soft, barren bodies
thrown together in heaps
for decomposition.

A few operative
bodies
are moved,
thrown together in heaps
for bandaging

sent home to their
wives
children
friends

with a perilous scent
still lingering
under their nostrils

disorienting
direction.

 

The Stew

I am cut into pieces, boiling
in a stew. A quarter cup of the fingers have been
diced away along with
a chunk of the right breast,
both little toes,
the bones and muscle in the
right forearm, a kidney,
and the fallopian tubes.

Salt dances painfully on the wounds of
what remains of the body. I cry out for some relief!
There is nothing.
Anesthesia will not behave!

The stew boils about, my pieces
become soft and
flesh falls from bone. The crockpot screeches
with the heat – it knows!
But, I do not blame the crockpot. It
must perform it’s duty.
No choice for a hunk of metal!

I scream again! The pain! Where is comfort?
Where is solace?

Ah! Cooking wine!
Take care of my wounds.
Take the pain away…..
After some time, the alcohol performs it’s own duties.
I relax!

I hope the stew makes it to all those empty mouths!