Stages of Decay
by and published in Edition Eleven of Pomegranate
Thin-clad in a hospital gown at a coffee table,
Overtired, and layers of fluid push out your skin
As if drowned.
A few routines, a few obstructions,
And now your feet swell, they rise from your shoes
Like bread dough. Your teeth are futile,
Jagged lines against the blandness of the morning
And the reflections refracting obstinately back
From so many polished surfaces and
Flat tracts of time.
Diagrams of muscles, angled bunches of thread
Crossing and weaving across collections of bone.
And these are the attitudes of the legs.
And these are the stages of decay.
And this is the ribcage, foreshortened,
On a plastic chart, and all it holds within
Is irrelevant,
Uncontainable.