Each pang is a razor wedged into the cleft between my breasts,
every word is a knife between the tender lung under two ribs,
my aorta is a river of regret, damn these delicate dissections!
Curse this liar’s flesh, this one-dimensional cage of rage, why
do I bleed each full moon but spill stars from eyes forevermore?
Why does the wolf have a wildness only at night but mourning dove
weep each sunrise? My instinct says we are one, and your pain is
mine, and when you suffocate I too am drowning in nightingales.
Remember the emperor whose bird sang of misfortune, how tsars
chase firebirds that grant ill wishes? Perhaps to love is surgery,
stitching misshapen limbs and quivering tongues to a monster mass.
I think of Hellraiser, of Pinhead saying pain is pleasure, that
tenterhooks of you are tearing my bandages off and stripping me.
I’m naked on…