Tidal Basin


Germination Detail Part III, by Leslie Shellow

contemplations about what stays in the net

Sunday, November 21, 2010

The Truth of This Illness

Some benevolent force is reorganizing
me into its own
image
I am being paginated,
and broken into stanzas,
rearranged in the blank space of parchment
 in order
to make more sense.


Urgent Care

I am fevered skin
The object of my desire, myself.
How does the afternoon sun burnish olive curtains
making the dreary window frame glow?

And the good sun’s announcement
as if to usher a glint of the outside
world into my sickbed.

It is moments like these
of utter stillness
determined by the body’s very own halt
that I feel the weight of bone
muscle
skin
organ.

A body

conspiring to dig its way down into
the soil beneath this house
pressing, more than releasing, down
through bed, floorboards, and foundation
in order to taste a future burrowed soily home.

I feel the dumping of memory
and the
Shy discovery of something hidden
Within the folds of words.

I feel a baby’s skin creeping 'round my body,
wrapping in tightness the in-between places of
tendon and ligament.

The street lights are out,
like midnight in Santa Fe,
the only thing visible the ancient breath
of stars.

And I, fevered child, lay still awake
and dreaming
The interstitial space between me and the
Unseen, disappears.

And what comfort this sensation
of doing nothing
and still sinking.
A sun bath persistently
scrubbing my face and
flickering loudly on the screen
of my closed eyelids.

I close,
patient
as if the screaming sun
and deafening gravity
would tear me apart once and
For all      
          The ember and shine of the day’s last light
leaves a blister on the bed where I lay
          The language of this poem perched
where a body had once been.