The Point of Seeing
Smile fixedly as the needle
presses through. An elixir entering
thin veins, turning blood to gold,
infinitely malleable, as the flesh
hardens, glittery, aflicker.
A textile more delicate
than gauze, a human tissue, not white
or emptied of letters.
The figure sown up. Stitches
I never take out. My oblique
pleasure turns into a skull
at this angle. Past the point
from proposition to meaning,
but this point. The eyes punctuated,
as though I could see through it.
As though there were birds
and weather upon it. The mouth
slowly steamed open, this
opening not poison or drug and maybe
we’ll begin to glow, the letters said.
First published in The Orchards Poetry Journal (Winter 2024): 93.
