Lillian Kalish
untitled
make sure to smooth out all the creases,
they say, when they rewrite
the history of the body
where the elbows bend
to produce crackled skin
no salve can rub this away
can forget the skin gone gray from
grating nails, the cavern now
exposed
when they go, they sink
fully into the folds
of the belly button
the knuckles
the mouth
- a harvest of intimacies –
ripe for remembering
like the bitter fruit you pluck
impossibly green and glowing
its juices, seeds drip down
your chin unwiped
you’ve taken well to eating bitterness
moaning ambiguously
an exalting spirals up
from your toes
spools of light
amber colored, no,
a waxy yellow
refract outwards through your holes
and hold you taut like a marionette
caught in radiance
it may not always have been
but this is where your history goes
receding as the shore does
and then out from you in gilded threads
like the tapping a maple tree for its sweetness
they tap you for yours
with hopes to drench you
in your own sugars
to loosen you so you do not feel
the first bite.