Plaza del Sol
This is a veterans' ward, here by the pool
in Florida, where every chaise is taken, every frame
stretched out to full extension, the bodies just removed
from cold storage, exposing to light and air
the wound, the scar, the birthmark's crushed grape,
contiguous chins undisguised by pearls,
pitted shoulders plumped or scapular, flesh
pleated under an upper arm, a vast loaf rising
out of the bathing bra, or chest collapsed
and belly preeminent, spine a trough
or a knotted vine climbing the broad cliff-wall.
Down from this pelvic arch five children came;
that suspicious mole, his mother kissed;
but who will finger such calves, their rosaries?
Here's a brace of ankles like water-balloons;
here's a set of toes shingled with horn.
Here is the man, prone, whose back is a pelt,
and the supine woman whose limbs are tinkertoys,
and the man whose tattooed eagle looks crucified,
and his brother with breasts, and his wife with none —
a woman tanned already, dried fruit arranged on a towel —
and her pale sister, seated, bosom piled in her lap,
oiling the lunar landscape of her thighs.
The hot eye over them all does not turn away
from bodies marooned inside loose colorful rags
or bursting their bandages there at the lip of the cave —
from ropy arms, or the heavy sack at the groin,
or the stone of the head — bodies mapped
and marbled, rutted, harrowed, warmed at last,
while everyone else has gone off into the sea.
Ellen Bryant Voigt
janet paterson: an akinetic rigid subtype, albeit perky, parky
pd: 54/41/37 cd: 54/44/43 tel: 613 256 8340 email: [log in to unmask]
smail: 375 Country Street, Almonte, Ontario, Canada, K0A 1A0
a new voice: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/
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