The Severing
       

Any pistol I've touched was a toy. The hanging
of the tramp: that was two towns over—

I wasn't born then—and the boy roped
to a bumper, dragged down a back road,

bouncing: I heard about that on the radio.
One section of an animal can be severed

from the rest, it's swift. It's chance
I'm alive with my love and we dance

in the bedroom in socked feet, wriggling
to the hiccups of Buddy Holly, whose body

was silenced early, tossed to ice, and Marvin
Gaye (father, gun), Oh mercy mercy

me, he whisper-sings—we spin, leap, collapse
in the sheets, happily sleepy. For whatever

surgery that has cut us free in this way,
the instruments are tiny, and they gleam.

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Copyright © 2013 Chris Forhan All rights reserved
from Ransack and Dance
Silver Birch Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission