by Marianne Boruch
because so much can be grafted though mostly
my own hip or back will do. If it’s really the body
and not metaphor, some expert in
cellular smarts could link-up those capillaries like
the guy on a chair at the basement power box knows
what’s what with wires
so the fridge will work again, and the stove,
and the lights when windows darken. The windows
did go dark. And I took my friend’s graft as gift: pictures
of the fire from her deck in Australia, sheet
after sheet of solid flaming red and black, sky
never like this to the south, her sickened pause for
photos to archive, document, as people say,
to round up the sum total, freeze, distance it for some point
called future: this nightmare really happened.
To frame and caption means the bloody bit might heal
in six weeks, a few years, a decade. A patient
opens her eyes post-surgery. Didn’t she just lie down
minutes ago after chatting with the doctor, his
last vacation to some island she never heard of?
She feigned interest. Now she’s here in this
cold room with parts of her missing.
I still imagine my friend sleeping. Trying to sleep. Fire
is a monster. No plot or plan, it never intends. So many creatures
in the bush or the city are shy and have no idea.
I don’t want to say which ones, even now. I want to hide them.
But it’s those who rarely make a sound that kept screaming.
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