Today's poem is by Jennifer Militello

Vivisection
       

No to this tide that pronounces the dark bruise at my rib, the way its cage gives as my self grows. Lengthy, I suggest. I dredge the depths. If I have been martyred, I reap in the violence an ache to measure the days I want to keep.

Spill from me. Be bagged with the apples; we will be charged by their weight.

granted a chaste mechanical frozen delay here where the hiccups of monkeys in the trees usurp the furl of spider nests

The matter of strangers winds me up like a mechanical bird then left trembling at the edge of the hive while masses sing accidently with their wings and their tiny shadows umbrella to win over a substantial abdomen of light. Offshore, I have/am the cough that alerts others. But here, a wait like ice with the wind of twine.

The self is a parcel. Its return leaves no trace.

The drift in each step contained possibility. The dream was a puzzle, a vial. My blood thickens with its equal parts. My body pictures itself being still. My pulse slows. I forget to take a breath.

Tweet
Copyright © 2023 Jennifer Militello All rights reserved
from Bennington Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission