The Bone
Polished, the Neolithic prize
would gleam almost life-
like above the headboard.
Rough, it would rest silently
in the glass case of the middle hall.
This one is different: A long highway
of red channels up to the pinnacle,
to the femoral joint, like Old
Trochanter’s Curve in one of those
sunsets so gruesome you
couldn’t turn away until
the valley drank in the vermilion sun.
Under dimmest lantern, with wire
brush and quarter-inch chisel, I could
trace the trail, and wonder
what had traveled it, and when.
Now it rests against the articulated
smoothness of the dining table, across
a stretch of what appears to be ever-
black of ebony surface:
The joint at the upper end, a gloxinia
on the naked wood; the lower, smaller end
smooth as if no flesh ever
grew, no blood ever bled.
And the channel—groove up
like an I.V. straight through
my arm—searching parallel avenues
for my heart, and finding it
in slumber. Then draining the precious
red through a new detour,
now a part of me. A curse
has befallen me, and I will
be damned in some archaic
language if I destroy it, so
I hide it from my family—
deep within their nighttime world—
just down the hall. And in Unther
Hall at the Academy, colleagues dream
to touch my channel—divert it
from me, and drive straight off
Old Trochanter’s Curve, flowering
down while my blood runs to the river.
