(no subject)

[nechamah]

Surgery Poem 1

Quick, think of 100 words
for breasts. You’ve got ten, at least,
I know it. I pick grapefruits
when I look at a picture of one
with the skin peeled off.

The stranger’s power-hands
show us the pictures
and turn sticky, in my imagination,
with the scooped out flesh,
juicy and sweet. I see the cloves
that preserve it, re-scent it,
tacking the buckled skin back together.
The stranger took the pictures
licking his lips at opening,
unpeeling. The buckled skin
made a three-pronged fleshy red
flower, but the stranger got greedy
for its secretness so he hid it,
sewing the edges of each petal
together, leaving just a curved line
and a neat rind, put back together.

Surgery Poem 2

In the first grade I drew the continents
on an orange skin, peeled it off and pushed it down
to explain why maps are sectioned like that,
why the north pole looks so long, and to prove
that something round can never be flattened.

Remembering that made me feel like I helped
to make you flat, even though my little hands
couldn’t force the rind to flatten out completely,
and I got marker all over my fingers.
Now, this stranger is better than me, an asteroid
or a tidal wave, peeling and carving away
enough of your continents
to make you
so beautifully
flat.