Today's poem is by Margaret Wack

Aubade as it Begins to Snow
       

The language of the sick is one of gasps and whispers,
madness halved and muted, put on like a velvet skin
above the crimson nakedness of blood. It is only human
when the holy cold comes licking full of flame tongue and false

promise to want to pare the bone from muscle
like a butcher, press the flesh against the surface
of the world and scratch the skin like silver foil—it is only
natural to dream of death in the long low months

like a slow snarl in the throat's hollow saying please,
please—eros the dissolver of the flesh come back
again to haunt you in the body of a writhing animal,
all rabbit-skinned and weak-kneed and hungry for blood.

Tweet

Copyright © 2023 Margaret Wack All rights reserved
from The Body Problem
Orison Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission