All the connectives of right recall
have grown askew. I know
a child could have lived, that
my body was cut. This cut
my memory half-sealed but glued
the edges together awry.
The skin is distorted, the scar-tissue
does damage, the accounts are wrong.
And this is called 'the healing process'.
Now nothing's aligned properly.
It's a barbarous zone. The bad sutures
thicken with loss and hope
brilliant, deliberate
shaking patients in an anteroom
refusing the years, ferocious to be called.
So I'll snip through the puckered skin
to where they tug for re-aligning. Now
steady me against inaccuracy, a lyric urge
to showing-off. The easy knife
is in my hand again. Protect me.
-Denise Riley, Stair Spirit [Equipage, 1992]
[the whispered ones]; materials: blood, unbroken glass bottle, paint, wine, canvass, polystyrene, slowness, reflection, still-life, surgical gloves, cloth, exhaustion.
ReplyDeleteI have been
with your father
and given him
How comes that?
I know not.
the whispered ones,
Not I / Pray you
What are they?
but ear-buzzing
Pray you
What are they?
Have you heard of no
Not a word.
You may do
then in time.
itself perforce in
to my business.
I have one
thing of a
queasy question which
I must act.
Brother, a word
descend, Brother I
My father watches. O
Not a word.
You may do
then in time.
I hear my
Father coming.
Pardon me in cunning I must draw upon you. Draw.
Seem to defend yourself no quit you well
come before my
father. Light here,
here. Light, O
here. So Fare Well.
Some blood drawn upon me would beget opinion of my more fierce endeavour.
more than this in sport.
Father, father.
Stop, stop. No
Help
Here he stood
in the dark
his sharp sword
out
But where is
he?
Look: I bleed.
when by no
means he could
By no means
what?
Persuade me
Murder
But that I
told him
revenging
parricides bend
Spoke with how a bond
The child was bound to the father
The child was bound
in fine, seeing
opposite to his
in fell motion with fell motion
with his home
My unprovided body my arm
And
But
When he saw
Bold
Roused
To the encounter or the noise
I made,
suddenly
suddenly
comes
By his authority I will proclaim it
He that conceals him, death.
his intent,
speech
bastard, I think
stand against reposure
trust, virtue, worth
Make words? No,
though produce
I'd turn it all
To suggestion practice.
If thought profits
my death very pregnant
his picture
I will send
far and near
That all
May have note of him.