Autopsy

Over time perhaps it is possible to understand
a little more about things: how the archives fill

with scraps that began as shoestrings, notes
to oneself written on cafe napkins; soft cotton

or rags tamped around a box to make it fit inside
a larger box. And the quaint customs and manners

fanned out like a tarot deck— the smiling cherub
of the self peeling off his other face to hold aloft,

the bird of opportunity and the peacock
of avarice; the wedding in the garden

and the animal quickly gored, in spite,
by its thrown-off rider. Start your careful

peeling off at one corner of the ear, to see
the body’s teeming highway of arteries and veins.

Each one breathes differently: imperceptible flutter
of moth wings, audible susurrus of breakers in the morning.

 

In response to Symbolical Head and Via Negativa: Existential Museuming.

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