lies about suffering & joy

the body departs organ by limb, a simple penance.

the female buddha on fire in the tapestry’s far corner wants the thousand eyes she gave away for the background, opening, returned.

the scored forearms an unlit runway, dying to leave the body a refugee shell, wedged between bookshelf and radiator. your favorite locksmith carries at all times picks the size and tenor of your vertebrae. this also is not magic.

the unfinished history of blood is a biography of one woman speaking without apology in either her diction or tone. it is good to have goals.

bones clatter through the lines coke-white and noisier than necessary, but who’d deny the dead their say, the living our miseries, the flies riding close, geese in tight formation, how sweet the rot, its slow tango, how much joy in the wound, its red skirt flaring.