Never to belong again to wings
that lifted, to heart,
to blood’s forsaking bodice:
this lyric forceps,
felled flèche d’amour,
furcular picked and dried
with earthy feints of sage
& fused with remnant gristle—
clavicles tongued, now thumbed,
memento mori
of a hard year. Why not,
then, after giving thanks,
break it, too—
talismanically? What good
is loss starved forever after?
To keep from freezing,
even a priest might commit
the Virgin’s statue to the flames.
From Orexia. Copyright © 2017 by Lisa Russ Spaar. Reprinted with the permission of Persea Books, Inc. (New York), www.perseabooks.com.