Damage
Cinematic: the gardenias
as they brown.
Plucking the heads/ my hand
going again and again
to them.
These pictures
burn steadily:
a brazen badge like the Virgin’s
heart aflame
or my scalp cut
razor-thin.
My mother’s glass-shorn sheets.
Drunks: obsessive and cutting.
Draw closer: this poem speaks in tongues,
draws its mouth across your body.
For the body is not safe.
Never was.
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