(scalpel)
is a song in the mouth of
a surgeon gloving—
the old wound
teeming omens, belly of
curved silver to excise
what was read in strars,
prohpecy. She swallowed
silent beneath a sheet
all blue, still hidden as
God. Spotlights drenched
her limbs. Her refusal
to show herself stricken
numb & sterile as a blade
(sand)
the neighbor boy sinking
hands into the acned moon
revealed after rain. He loosed
a wicked doll, tennis balls,
her mother tongue. He found
her given name becoming
when he told her to die
so he could push into her,
a kiss. She recalls a rescue
in her grandmother’s voice—
a fraying lilt, beckoning back
with grief. Her gritty mane
when told to come home
is what you might call faith
(storms)
with morphine eyes,
the tipped ink sky—
her spill of oily hair
sewage plumbed for
treasure. How she saved
droplets in a vial cloudy as
a mirror, revered as holy water,
muddling the stains
in bright glass windows—
a promise corked into
a bottle tossed to sea,
from which a body emerges
nothing less than licked clean