The Body
       

The body is a book and we the words. Footsteps
trace a dumbfounded syntax. Weaving, indecipherable,
I exit the door of a saloon doubling as a paragraph
and wander into the parking lot. I thrust mindlessly,
the car hoves through turns then broken light pulses

in the rearview and the policeman asks me if I might
bare my breasts and mouth gentle obscenities because
this is how the body corrects itself. His head is solid
as a barn door and I am not trying to be sly when I
raise a delicate white hand to my chest and point out

that I am a man, but he is nonetheless chagrined and
offers me his badge and gun. Not again, I think. Not
again. My back seat is lousy with badge-rattle: every
time I turn too tight they scuttle loose as crabs across
the seat and one more gun thumps to the floor. This

is how the law seduces good men into correcting
the misgivings of moralizing apple-munchers, I think,
as he closes his citation book and crumples weeping
into the ditch. This is when two horses step gingerly
from the woods, each hoof in its perfect place, and I

consider opening the car door to stand beside them,
my pockets full of apples as I raise on tip-toe to look
in their eyes, seeking the candlelight that flickers there,
but they are simply horses, who have inexplicably arrived
by chance. I will not be your medicine. Police yourselves.

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Copyright © 2012 Michael Bazzett All rights reserved
from The Literary Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission