Before the Celebration

published in Salt River Review

waiting to be mended.

dimming light and the hour’s hoax

of perfect timing.

a life-sized dummy

rotating on a flat earth, struck by pins and the busy scissors

of the seamstress, quick,

what was her name?

a chart of the earth’s surface

was the body’s,

tailored to changing measurements,

each year look ma, I’ve

grown.

then there was a rip

so final.

a rip. maybe only a pinpoint split --

and darkness falling swiftly.

such dead stillness,

and the dummy tilting elsewhere, waiting to be lit.