Dry Heat

Anthony Pennino

Surgery

I want interpretation of my own unwritten mysteries.

To understand the labor pains that birth my actions.

To part layers of skin and fat,

And tenderly caress the beating core, red and hidden.

I can be a guide, but not for long.

For, digging images from their dark resting places,

Takes a toll.

Takes a fall.

See:

One place, where black, sinewy limbs writhe under clean,

                    showpiece bedsheets,

Where thick, muscular rage coils under thin white cloth,

There is a thing, not a man,

That desires destruction.

It struggles to break free of the surf.

It thrashes.

Its claws, teeth, and spines curl strips of metal from the shining lid,

That I have wrenched down, over the prison,

Of its glass jar. 

Over there, a whitened man forgotten since youth,

Eyes tethered to the wilting grass,

His shoulders slump, as he sits

Atop a heart-shaped mound, holding a rose.

His long snow beard falls over his knees,

Onto a two-seat bicycle, rusty with disuse.

Here, look, where a stag used to bound:

Leaping over vine strangled, stone pillars,

And dancing around the emerald aroma of towering spruce -

Moist with yellow lichen and green loam,

That grip bark like spiders’ legs. 

He would leap over rocky, thorn-choked pits.

Oh! The beast was a proud survivor,

But, no more.

Now, he is a crooked and malformed shadow,

His spine broken where needles inject

‘Pams and ‘prines. His blood

Is uncured concrete -

Slurry-wet

Rock-paste,

Slowly ripping and tearing fragile walls and

Arteries traveling toward the center of his might.

His voice is filled with shards of dropped plates

Leaving his family without china,

To eat meager fare,

From a red and white checkered table cloth.

Lastly, in the corner there lies a box, packed with care,

Perching in a small, dark closet,

Under moth-dust aromas

Clinging to it like silk. 

Inside, treasures crowd over each other, anticipating,

Though no knife touches the tape for years.

Through time and pressure and other boxes stacked on top,

Ruined are the items once displayed on golden shelves,

In the spot where all could see.

This is all I want, to keep memories

Silent like drifting ash,

Kicked up by smoldering photos,

From youth lost and loved. This:

Digging stainlessly into those elusive

Writings that sit next to a heart,

Underneath red fat and skin.

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