page ripped from a poetry journal (#1420)

     Each Bone of the Body
     
          sounds like a prayer, sacrum,
     sternum, scapula, as if those
         who first regarded, then named,
     them belonged to an ancient cult
         of architects who built temples
     that resembled human forms with
         limbs outstretched so that they
     faced the stars like stars and
          offered back this planet's
     elements as five spokes on a 
          spinning wheel.
     
     If each bone of the body is holy
          it is because it gives shape to 
     mortal love--bowl of the pelvis
          like a cradle, sickles of the
     hips like two moons, every angle
          open as the mouth to a kiss--
     even though we will all be torn.
          one day, from the comfort
     of our usual orbits, and broken.
     
     Yesterday, a woman I didn't
          know unbuttoned her blouse
     slowly, as on a long summer morning,
          held the violet silk slightly
     apart like those statues of Christ
          from my youth with his private
     smile red as the hook and eye of
          a surgeon's needle, his crimson
     nimbus, cold fingers resting
          against his quiet stone heart
     that was forever on fire, wounded,
          crowned with bloody thorns,
     and worn like false regret or like
          a ghastly pendant hung
     at the precise center of his chest.
     
     Once I believed
          love was like that, a cruelty
     that haunted the empire of
          my childhood with the hushed
     voices of black-robed nuns
          who spoke of Adam's ripped side,
     how God drove his fist in
          until that first man fell
     silent, then snapped off a
          single rib that looked, at
     first, like the waxing moon until
          he crushed it beneath his
     heels like dust, mixed in blood
          from the season's first kill,
     then gave it to the wind for form,
          to the man who called that
     new shape Eve, though she cared
          little for his list of rules
     and names, preferred instead slender
          throats of irises, pomegranates
     with their skin of fire, orb of
          gold for morning, silver-black
     at night, and the circular logic
          of stars.  She was judged to be
     too much in love with the sleek
          tongues of fallen angels, the
     taste of what was sweet and forbidden
          and sin.  What could she say
     except that she loved the heft of
          her bones, the way her mouth
     had wrapped around the promise of
          knowing all there was to know?
     
     In a room whose battered wooden
          floor was always covered with
     thick curls of white wax and so
          seemed in perpetual winter,