Spirits
Then we set up
Hopeful breathless
The Ouija board
Late but the numb
Fingers we lightly
Rested on that
Little planchette
After setting down
Our drinks hands
Icy as the hands
Of the dead
Moved nothing
Waited okay yes
I’ll have another
Nothing waited
We had no good
Questions got
Only the one
Answer
Laughed it off
Prosciutto
Veil of flesh, meat silk:
Gift of the passage of time
And the sharpest knife—
Merciless. All that’s left,
Here, of a life (that fat
Intelligence and joyful
Greed at the trough, that long
Gone intensity of response):
Mud-slick in sunlight, once,
Now bled out into a dusk
Of attention and patience.
Dry, aged—a part in a hanging
Forest of parts; cured, yes,
Also (tender and tended),
Paid for and finely sliced.
Shredded to ribbon and
Wound around dripping
Chunks of bright melon,
These translucent remnants
Melt on lips whose matching shade
Makes of each bite a kind
Of kiss . . . as I dissolve into
The memory of sheer glossy
Corpse damask, licking a swath
Of light reflected in grease—
My fabric, your fabric—
Tasting of salt and smoke.
